Idle Hands
by DarkRule
Summary: When a case gets too hot, teenagers Dean and Sam Winchester are hidden at a private school for their safety. But soon they learn that this school has some dangerous secrets of its own.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter One**

He looked like a tool.

They had had to go out and buy a whole new wardrobe for both him and Sam. Dress slacks could only be gray or black, absolutely no jeans allowed. Belts were required, and they couldn't have studs or designs on them. Shirts had to be white and collared, not to mention tucked in. Then there was the school blazer in forest green, which had a little red dragon underneath the script Penworth School.

New socks. New shoes. New haircuts. New underwear even! Dean stared at his reflection in the mirror in total disgruntlement. He'd never looked less like himself. That reflection was some boy with the last name Dewberry or Cheltenham, who dated girls named Muffy and Chiclet. It wasn't Dean Winchester, and he didn't want to do this. "Dad-"

"We've gone over it," Dad barked at the table of the motel room. Dean wasn't going to win this battle. This case was getting hot, too hot, and Dad wanted the boys out of the way. It wasn't fair how Dad could drag them here, there, and yonder while he chased ugly, and then not let them participate. Yeah, Dean knew this case was different. Yeah, he knew this demon especially liked to eliminate a hunter's kin both old and young if the opportunity arose in the strike zone he inhabited. And yeah, Dad should still let Dean help.

Sam was in the bathroom parting his hair one way, and then parting it another. Dean didn't think Sam hated this quite as much as he did, and that was a bit of a betrayal. The principal had been very impressed with Sam's test scores. Based on his academic prowess, thirteen-year-old Sam was being allowed to start in ninth grade. A little less impressed with Dean's scores, the principal signed him up as a senior on academic probation.

This demon needed to get ganked fast, or Dean was going to start playing croquet and drinking tea with his little finger out. He'd use words like _smashing_ and pat friends on the back while calling them _old chap_. Dean knew exactly what these schools were like from television, not to mention the kinds of people who went to them, and now he was going to be_ one_ of them.

Maybe Chiclet would be hot. It was all he could hope for.

He sulked in the car on the drive, wondering how Dad was going to feel whenever he came back to Stonebridge, Pennsylvania for his sons and found them talking about the stock exchange and listening to chamber music. Dean didn't even know what that was, but he was pretty sure that he'd be listening to it. Hearing a rustle of a page from the back seat, he said, "What are you reading, Sammy?"

"About the school," Sam said. "It was an all-boys school when it opened in the late 1880s. The first year only thirty students were enrolled in all four grades combined. Now Penworth has six hundred, and it started accepting girls in the 1970s. The motto is excellence to excellence."

Dean shuddered to consider that this could have been an all-boys school. Then he really would have had to put his foot down with Dad. And Bobby, wow, did Dean owe Bobby one. Penworth had been Bobby's suggestion, because he knew a hunter who knew a hunter who had some connection to this school, and hunters' kids were always slipped in as a free ride if the need arose. Dean was going to mail Bobby a croquet ball. When Bobby asked why, Dean would refuse to tell him. That would make Bobby crazy, wondering why he had a croquet ball.

"Eighty percent of the teachers have advanced degrees," Sam continued. Another page turned. "Latin and Greek are offered in the curriculum."

"I know Latin," Dean grumbled. There couldn't be much more to it than the variations of _die, demon, die_ that he'd chanted a hundred times already. And whatever else Latin had, he didn't need. Dean knew what was important, and what was important was the hunt.

"The school has its own museum, and there are over forty clubs ranging from Spanish to chess to cooking," Sam mused. Dean wanted to throttle him for not sulking and staring out the window in mute disagreement with Dad's decision.

Dad pulled through the gate and down the long driveway to the school, which was a bunch of red buildings with trees all around and wide stretches of clipped grass. Classes had started last week. Sam was assigned to a double for a dorm room with some dweeb named Kaplan Meeker, and Dean had a single as a senior. They were both in Beechman West Dorm, although Sam was on the ground floor and Dean the third. The girls lived in East.

Oh, thank God there would be girls. It would give him something to look at while his teachers droned about alleles and matrices.

They carried Sam's stuff in first. The hallways were quiet, since everyone was in the dining hall having breakfast. There was a whiteboard stuck to the door split down the middle with a red line. One side read KAPPIE and the other read SAM. Kappie Meeker. That was a punch-me name if ever there was one. Dean shook his head as he went inside and dumped the plastic bag with a new sheet and pillow set on the bare bed. The school had regulation blankets, the same forest green as the blazers. Kappie's side of the room was neat as a pin, the bed made and no posters on the walls because the school took the same dim view of posters as it did shirts without collars and belts with studs.

"Let's get your things," Dad grunted, so they returned to the car for Dean's. The school was so rich that it had an elevator. They rode it up since Dad was antsy to go. Dean had a whiteboard on his door, and someone clever had written Mr. Invisible upon it. Hysterical. He dropped his bag with a thud and looked around the tiny space. White walls, popcorn ceiling, regulation brown carpet, a bare bed, empty desk and dresser, a view of a tree out the window.

"You should let me fight," Dean blurted on the walk back to the car to say goodbye. Sam tensed and looked around nervously, since this argument had reached very loud decibel levels three times before.

"One day," Dad said. "But not today."

Sam waved when the car pulled away from the curb. Dean didn't.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

Was it okay to be happy? He didn't know.

Dad wasn't happy about the demon, and Dean wasn't happy about the school. So Sam wasn't sure if he should be happy. Maybe it was okay as long as he didn't tell anyone about it. That would be his secret. Then it wouldn't hurt anyone.

He shouldn't be happy anyway. Once he started to feel happy, not about yesterday and today but _tomorrow_, the promise of happiness in tomorrow, the demon would be ganked and the Winchesters on the road again. So he had to keep his happiness a secret, and never let it grow too great. When he opened his textbooks, when he walked to class, he tried not to do it too eagerly.

Four o'clock was his time to meet up with Kappie at the school's gigantic library. Kappie had a particular set of study carrels he liked, high up on the third floor behind the stacks. He figured that Sam would like them, too. There were few windows to give rise to daydreams, no giggles from students crowded around computers. There were only books and archived materials as far as the eye could see in every direction. But those were enough to make Sam daydream. He thought about the words in each one flowing into his brain and marking themselves there indelibly. If he could actually do that, he'd be the smartest boy in the world.

Kappie was weird, but it was a good weird. So that was okay. He ran his life by the beep of his watch. Half-past six was the beep to reach for his glasses and get up. The beep at a quarter to seven found him dressed and seated at his desk reviewing his work from the day before. At seven on the dot, his backpack was around his shoulders and he was out the door to breakfast. Sam kept to the same schedule so he would have a friend. Kappie knew pretty much everything there was to know about Penworth, since he was a third-generation student. That was nothing though, he said when Sam was impressed. Plenty of the students here were fifth generation, going all the way back to the last century when the school was built.

That was a nice thing about Kappie, how he didn't need to stroke his ego with Sam being impressed. They had several classes together, first period Latin, second period Classical Greek, and third period history. Then they split apart for the rest of the day until library time. After dinner, they were back in their room attuned to his beeping watch. Seven to eight was study time. Eight to eight-thirty was shower time. Sam's favorite beep was at eight-thirty, because Kappie scolded, "Shh!" like Sam had been yelling, and sneaked a small television out of his closet. Those were not allowed. They crowded around it to wave the antennae and watch an episode of The Fraud, muffling their snickers in their hands.

The objects in their room were covered in Post-It notes, yellow for Latin and green for Greek. They weren't allowed to nail anything to the walls, but Kappie stuck big maps to theirs with sticky wax. One was of the ancient world, so when they ran across place-names in their studies, they could find out where it was. That made it more real to Sam, and more likely he'd remember it. He thought about joining the Latin and Greek clubs, but so far he hadn't gone.

His teachers were demanding but fair, and they liked Sam since he was quiet and always prepared. A lot of the students knew each other from the private junior high on the other side of Stonebridge. So they had their own friendships and weren't interested in making a new one with Sam. But most of them weren't mean, just not inclusive. The food at the school wasn't bad either, although a lot of people complained that there wasn't a soda machine. Sam didn't care about that. There was so much he liked about Penworth.

And then there was the girl in his Latin class. She sat next to him in the front row, and she was beautiful. Her name was Lucy Warwick, and she always threaded her hands through her dark hair when she was reading a passage. This morning she did it again while they took a pop quiz. His eyes kept slipping to her involuntarily, even though he didn't want to be accused of cheating off of her paper. But Sam was already finished with his, the present tense conjugation of _amare_ and the three short sentences beneath it for translation.

Her eyes didn't match, and he thought that was beautiful, too. One eye was brown and the other was hazel. He didn't know which he liked better. The hazel one was like a pale brown starfish pressed to a green background, and the fully brown eye an intense russet. While stretching his legs during library time, he'd opened an art book and labeled the exact shade. That was probably weird. But it would be his secret, just like it was his secret that this school made him happy.

Mr. Warner had them switch pop quizzes with their neighbor to be graded. Lucy had done _amare_ correctly, but she'd messed up on the second and third translated lines. Looking over his shoulder as the teacher took a call from the office, Kappie hissed, "Don't mark her wrong!"

Lucy looked over and Kappie sank back into his seat with a nervous smile. Since Sam had already marked them wrong in pen, he couldn't do anything about it. He returned the quiz and said, "You almost had it. You just mixed up the nominative with the accusative."

"Damn. Well, good job on yours," Lucy said, passing back his perfect score. She shook her head ruefully and looked down at her paper. Kappie poked Sam in the back. A note flew over his shoulder a moment later. _NEVER correct a Warwick. Next time, give her the A. _When the quizzes were passed to the front, Sam noticed that Kappie had gotten an A-. That didn't seem possible unless he had done it deliberately.

It wasn't until they were walking to their Greek class that he had a chance to pull Kappie aside and say, "Dude, she didn't have a problem with it! And how could you have missed _amant_? You knew it perfectly well this morning before breakfast."

"Trust me," Kappie said, his eyes serious behind his big glasses. "I'm speaking as a third generation, all right? It's just better to lay low at this school. Be good, not great. Be second, not first. And then you'll come out of it."

"What does that mean?" Sam asked.

"It means you play the game, or the game plays you," Kappie said. The minute bell rang, and they ran for class.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three**

Even douches needed a school, Dean supposed one day at his private lunch, and they'd created a doozy for themselves with Penworth.

Its nickname of 'The Pen' was accurate, since a wall ran all the way around the grounds. The only time they were let out officially was for P.E. or after school exercise on the athletic field, although he let himself out unofficially for his own sanity. Deep in the trees was an old cemetery for unlucky students and teachers of long ago. The latest grave was dug in the 1950s, and the earliest was in 189-something. It was hard to tell on that last one, since the engraving was so old that it was nearly gone. A lot of kids had died in that time period.

Upstairs in his room while eating his apple, he flicked through a pamphlet about the school's history that had been in his orientation packet. There was a blurb about the graveyard, and a side note that severe illnesses in the winters of 1905 and 1918 had exacted heavy tolls on the school population and the wider community in general.

It was better to be alone in his room, or in the cemetery. Anywhere else, he seemed to be finding trouble. Or maybe it was finding him, since he certainly wasn't going out to look for it. Dean received a demerit on the first day for being late to his English class. It wasn't on purpose. He'd gotten lost, an innocent mistake. Demerits could be worked off with the school gardener, but Dean didn't have any intention of clipping bushes for two hours as punishment for taking a wrong turn. He mailed the yellow demerit slip to Bobby instead. There you go, Bobby. One fresh demerit hot off the press.

This school was stupid. Lunch was the worst meal, since a teacher sat at every table and guided a discussion. Philosophy, politics, music history, it was like having yet_ another_ class on top of the seven he had already. What did Dean know about music history? He hadn't known what any of them at the table were talking about, nor did he care. He just wanted to sit with his thoughts. Now he skipped going altogether. At breakfast he liberated an apple from the centerpiece on the table, and that was what he ate for lunch every day while hiding in his room.

Hiding. He didn't want to think about it like that, but that was what it was. Fortunately, most of the real dicks on his floor lived on the other end. The Residential Advisor had the room right across from Dean's. The guy was out of his room like a shot the second Shawn Percival or Tyson started pounding on doors or yelling in the hallways. Still, sometimes one of those assholes managed to pull off a midnight POUND POUND POUND on Dean's door and run away before the RA managed to drag himself out of bed.

It was time for P.E. Already in his gym clothes, he threw the apple core in the trash and went downstairs, joining up at the tail of the group heading for the locker rooms. They went in as he walked past to the gate. The coach was nowhere in sight yet. He was a douche, too. Talking about how fitness levels slumped more with each generation, he rode them hard in the hour like he was going to make up for society's failings personally on the sweat of their backs.

Students trickled out of the locker rooms in twos and threes. Even the pretty girls at this school weren't enough to make up for his misery. A drop-dead gorgeous blonde senior named Hilary asked snootily at the lockers one day if Dean was of the Boston Winchesters, and when he said no, just the plain old garden-variety Winchesters, she scoffed, turned her back, and whispered to her girlfriends Becca and Emmie. Then she turned around to ask with sweet acidity why Dean was here at Penworth if he wasn't anybody worth knowing. Her friends fell apart in giggles and all three strode away.

Dean wasn't used to being so disrespected right to his face. Cripes, he'd met _demons_ with better manners, and that was saying something. Apparently if you didn't have a pedigree embroidered on your underpants, you just didn't fit in at Penworth School. The only class he shared with Hilary was P.E., and for that he was thankful.

The group grew bigger at the gate, and still the coach didn't show. Shawn was bothering someone, as he always did. There wasn't anywhere on campus or beyond, save the cemetery, where Dean was beyond the reach of Shawn's barking laugh. He was King Douche of Penworth, a pimply, barrel-chested guy who had to be six-foot four and weighed two hundred and fifty pounds. He tripped freshmen in the hallways and knocked books out of girls' hands, came to class and flicked balled up pieces of paper at heads. Dean had two classes with him, P.E. and history. Today a paper ball had nailed him on the ear. He hadn't reacted, but his fingers were tight on his desk to stop himself.

Nor did he react when a penny followed it, Shawn hissing that he was making a contribution to the scholarship fund for poor students. If Dean got kicked out of this school, Dad was going to have to stop his case to come and get him. Dean would never hear the end of that, pressing pause on a hunt and people dying all because of Dean.

"Stop, Shawn!" a girl was saying. Dean looked over to see the guy holding the girl's very long braids like the reins of a horse as she squirmed to escape. Shawn's friends laughed, and everyone else looked away.

Flicking the braids, Shawn said, "Whoa, girl!"

"I said stop! That hurts!"

Fed up, Dean said, "Dude, leave her alone!"

Heads turned back, and people edged away. Shawn flicked the braids a second time. He pulled one down to turn her in Dean's direction. "Look who's feeling big in the britches today, boys! Our little charity case! This your filly here, Free Ride?"

"Stop!" the girl yelled, her voice cracking over the grounds as she yanked her hair from his hands. Shawn laughed and reached back to grab one, and then Dean's fist was soaring through the air and striking that pimply cheek. He'd hit as hard as he meant to, and that sent the douche onto his ass in the grass. His friends lunged forward to grab Dean's arms and hold him steady.

The coach descended upon them, yanking everybody apart and demanding to know what happened. Shawn got to his feet and pointed at Dean. "He punched me for no reason, Coach!"

"Oh, I seriously doubt it was for no reason," the coach said sarcastically. So maybe he wasn't as big of a douche as Dean thought. Canvassing the crowd, he called, "Miss Sanchez?"

"I just got out here, Coach," the girl lied. Her eyes were round with worry.

"He was pulling her hair and refusing to let go!" Dean spluttered, making a gesture to the red-faced girl with the braids.

She looked back and forth from Shawn and his friends to the coach. Shawn said, "Aw, we were just playing! Weren't we, Lindsay?"

"Is that true?" the coach asked.

"They sure looked like they were just playing," Hilary offered.

"And I'm sure that I can trust your opinion, Miss Warwick," the coach said with the same sarcasm that he'd applied to Shawn. But Lindsay nodded miserably that it had all been a game, giving the coach no choice but to send Dean to the administration building for fighting. He explained the situation to the douche of a principal, who gave him a second demerit and told him sternly that fighting was not tolerated at Penworth School. Another incident and he faced suspension.

"Look, son, I know you've grown up with a very different background than our boys and girls," Principal West said. "But there's a way you do things, and a way things should be done. In a civilized society . . ."

Civilized? It seemed to Dean that in a civilized society, any guy worth a dime punched an asshole for trying to get his hands on a resisting girl. So he didn't know what kind of civilization this school was promoting, but he wasn't on board. The principal released him with a parting shot that his father would be called.

Dean stopped at the mailroom, sent off the second demerit to Bobby in righteous indignation, and went to the cemetery. He thought he'd seen enough of cemeteries in seventeen years, but here it meant peace. Sitting under a tree, he fumbled through some schoolwork and then wandered around to stretch his legs. There were three graves for 1905, boys who'd kicked it presumably to that illness, and five for 1918. That wasn't a lot, considering the thirty graves here.

Girls hadn't been admitted until the 1970s, so the only female in this whole place was a teacher who died in 1928. She'd only been twenty-seven. Still, she was one of the oldest people to have been buried in this place. Elizabeth Dorman.

Taking his seat under the tree and pulling the science text back to his lap, he paused to wonder if she'd been hot.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Four**

There were just some kids that were different, kids you avoided, and a lot of them were Fifth Gens.

That was what someone was called for being the fifth generation of his or her family to come to Penworth. There were actually quite a lot of them, considering the small size of the school at its inception, but this was an area that many families stayed in, and their kids stayed in, and the grandkids beyond. Being a Fifth Gen was a mark of honor, and a Fourth Gen was almost as good. Third Gens like Kappie were a dime a dozen. There wasn't anything special about being a Second Gen, and those students didn't even identify themselves as such. If you were a first generation like Sam and Dean, it was better not to draw attention to it. That was less than nothing, and your family was seen as just passing through.

Stuart Miller was the president of the Spanish Club and a Fifth Gen junior, but not one of the ones that had to be avoided. He was a sunny face in the halls, greeting everyone from teachers to fellow exalted Fifth Gens down to lowly Sam alike. Not a handsome guy, he still usually had one girl or another walking around with him. Sam studied how he did it. Dean had loads of charm with girls that Sam knew he was never going to master, but Stuart didn't. He was just friendly, remembering names and birthdays, wishing people luck on tests, asking if someone's sick grandmother was doing better. After breakfast one day, he leaned over to Sam and whispered, "Hey, bud, just so you know, there's a little food stuck in your teeth." Sam went to the bathroom and saw that it was in truth a great big gob right between his front teeth, and flushed to think that he could have spent the whole day walking around like that with no one telling him. Stuart could have shouted that out and embarrassed him, or pretended not to see it. So Sam liked Stuart for sparing him what could have been a major embarrassment.

Stuart was a good person. The Fifth Gen sophomores Corey and Amber Irving were not. Kappie told Sam that if an Irving was coming your way, just go the other direction. The twins had a younger brother coming to the school in two years, and Sam should avoid him, too. Sam didn't think that he'd still be at Penworth in his junior year, but he filed it away in his mental banks just in case.

Corey Irving expected the seas to part when he walked into a hallway, and he never waited in line at the dining hall. He just strolled up to the front and inserted himself there at the stacks of plates. No one said a word. Once he cut in front of Sam, and as Sam quietly accepted a plate of food from the Hispanic worker on the other side of the counter, Corey was heckling, "Why don't you make more tacos or burritos or something? Huh? Like the food of your people?" Then he laughed, because Corey thought he was being funny and not rude.

Amber Irving was just as bad, hurling insults right and left about people's weight and looks, ballsy enough to go up to a girl and circle the zit on her forehead in black marker. The siblings weren't even nice to each other, yelling _skank_ and _bastard_ across the hallways. So those were some of the Fifth Gens it was smart to avoid. The Irvings, the Percivals, the Warwicks, the Dillingers, the Baron-Clumbs, and Kappie said that in his grandfather's time, you also avoided the Hermans. But the two kids of that generation didn't have kids of their own, so there weren't Hermans at Penworth any more.

Sam saw the point when it came to the Irvings, and Dean had tangled with a Percival already. Hilary Warwick was a senior with major attitude, and no one dared to contradict her on anything. But her little sister Lucy wasn't remotely stuck-up, and didn't take it the wrong way when Sam had to mark off one of her questions on a second pop quiz. Instead she asked for his help in understanding the ablative, and when she smiled in thanks, his heart skipped a beat. He loved those mismatched eyes. Kappie shook his head afterwards at the library and said Sam was playing with fire.

When Sam finished his work, he wandered the archives. Old school records, Stonebridge newspapers, even files of students who'd attended here eighty years ago . . . nothing had been put on microfiche. It had been copied and stuck in binders, or bound into books. He pulled out a book at random and brought it back to the carrel. It was from the 1950s.

Someone had marked a page with a red tab. He turned idly in its direction, skimming articles on budget wrangling and a cake competition, and flipped again to the headline MISSING directly under the tab. The article was about a fifteen-year-old boy named Curtis Tell, a Penworth sophomore who hadn't made it back to his dorm room after dinner one night. A sudden tornado had landed in the area and dissipated just as quickly. Sam flipped the pages to later editions of the newspaper to see if there were updates. Search parties were canvassing the school for any place he could have gone, but they found the body outside school grounds two days later. He'd been thrown clear over the wall.

Oddly, his body was frozen solid. The bewildered coroner had no explanation. Sam kept turning pages to read snippets at wider and wider intervals. The Tell parents were demanding an investigation. The body had been cremated on accident. The coroner was accused of mishandling the case. He insisted that the body was in perfect condition, except that it was frozen. Pinching the tab, Sam turned back to look at the date of the MISSING article. It had happened in late April, a freak weather event with a single casualty. Sad.

Kappie's watch beeped for dinnertime. As Sam put the book away, he was surprised to see Dean one aisle over. "What are you doing?"

"What's it to you?" Dean grunted. He sneezed at the dust coming off the binder he was paging through.

It wasn't anything to Sam, so he turned to walk away. Hearing a sigh, he looked back. Dean sneezed again and said, "Looking up some teacher."

"For class?" Sam asked.

"No. You ever visit the school cemetery, Sammy?" Dean said. Sam shook his head. The binder snapped shut and dust flew up into Dean's face. He blinked to clear his eyes and shoved the binder back onto the shelf. "Well, I have. It's big. Stay alive, kid, this isn't the luckiest place."

Author's Note: Never start posting a story during lambing season. Fourteen days. Forty-five lambs including three bottle babies. Lesson learned.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter Five**

Dad called in a temper about the fighting early one morning, giving Dean no chance to explain. So Dean gave up and waited for the explosion to wind down, saying nothing more than _uh-huh_ and _yes, sir_ at regular intervals. What he didn't say was that he was sorry, since he wasn't. Shawn should get punched every day as a matter of course, like an eighth period just for him.

"How's the hunt?" Dean asked once Dad paused for breath.

"Terrible! Now stay out of trouble!" Dad roared, and hung up.

It might not have been going so terribly if Dean had been allowed to go. He would have been an extra set of eyes and fists, one more finger on a trigger. But he had to go to Penworth instead.

The seniors talked about college almost all the time. College applications, college interviews, college tours, GPAs for this college and extracurriculars for that college . . . most of them had taken their SATs in early June and received their scores in mid-July. He heard a lot about that too, so-and-so getting a 620 on math but only a 570 on verbal, another so-and-so nailing it with an 800 on verbal and a 750 on math, a third so-and-so coming in with an embarrassing 1040 overall. Someone asked what Dean had gotten. When he said that he hadn't taken them, the reaction was the equivalent that he'd imagine he would get to sneezing directly in their faces.

They avoided him like the plague since then, by and large. That was okay. He ate his food, collected his Cs in class, and went on with his day. This wasn't real, the work they were doing. It certainly felt real to them, but Dad was out there doing real work, the grit work of this world, while they fussed over whether a score of 1330 should be sent out to colleges or the tests retaken entirely. They had the luxury of this silliness, and Dean didn't want to share it with them.

He didn't want to share anything with them, not even a floor of the dorm to study. Dean was out in the cemetery that afternoon doing his homework when a sound startled him. His heart sank to see the wizened old gardener coming through the gate with a trash bag. There was no time to hide anywhere, not with his school stuff scattered all around. The man gauged him for several long seconds, stopping on the path to do so, and then turned away and proceeded to a grave where a piece of paper was stuck to it. He jammed it in his trash bag.

"Shouldn't you be at the races or in some after school club?" the old man grunted. The faint sound of cheering echoed from the athletic field. It wasn't a mandatory activity, according to announcements that morning, just for kids looking to burn off some steam or wanting to qualify for a local race next month.

"Not a racer," Dean said. And he wasn't intending to join any of those dorky clubs. He had started to hurriedly gather his things when the man came in, but now he took them back out. "Don't you care that I'm here?"

"Can't say I do, long as you're not making a mess for me to clean." He leaned behind a gravestone and picked up a soda can. "This yours?"

"No."

"Didn't think so. Some kids think it's funny, this place. A playground. They'll keep thinking it's funny until someone they love dies. But there's always a fresh batch of kids coming down the pike to find this funny again. You think it's funny, boy?"

A cemetery? Usually it was just a place of sweat to him, digging up some body and setting it on fire. At Penworth, it was his only refuge outside of his room. "Not really," Dean answered as the gardener picked up fast food wrappers. "You know how they died, all of these people?"

"Sure, some of them. Some got sick, some got unlucky, some were fools. Like this fella," he tapped on a grave with the name William Sung, who died in 1905, "he was sick. The Sung family, they live down the road from me in Stonebridge, still tell the story of this great-uncle of theirs who died in that illness. They don't got the money to send their kids here no more."

"Who was unlucky?" Dean asked. He didn't even know that he cared that much, but it was better than his schoolwork.

"This fella! Now he was unlucky." The gardener patted the headstone of Norris Pander, dead in 1938 at the age of thirteen. "Lots of kids like to hang on the roofs, get some air, escape the grind. Against the rules, but they do it anyway. He slipped off Beechman, his first time up there. Accident. And here next to him is Darrin Runzie, and he was a fool. Used to have horses here and teach riding. Put his head right by a back hoof. Straight As, four years of lessons at horses, and no excuse to forget that. Just a fool. School was retiring that old horse and he wanted it for his own. So did some other boy. Well, the other boy got it." Whistling, he walked farther away in pursuit of more garbage.

Dean had a packet due for science to finish up, with empty circles on the last page to draw different parts of the cell. Breaking out colored pencils, he finished in no time. When one wasn't trying for an A, one didn't have to try that hard. And what did it matter? Dad was going to gank the demon at some point and whisk them away from Douche School. It was so hard to be here doing nothing, hour after hour, day after day.

Maybe he _would_ go to the races, just to let off some steam. Fly around the track a few times, pretend he was chasing after some flavor of hell's ugly. He needed to stay in shape for that. The gardener grunted goodbye, the trash bag scratching along the path as he left, and Dean quit the cemetery right afterwards.

The cheering grew louder and louder as he neared the red fence that demarcated the field and bleachers. He still had his gym clothes in his backpack, so he'd just step under the bleachers for a quick change. The cheering stopped collectively as he rounded the corner to the field, maybe seventy students in the stands including his brother, and a handful of adults staring down to the track. Dean stared at them as they stared to the track beside him, and then they began to scream.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter Six**

That morning in Latin, Lucy Warwick turned and said, "So, are you guys coming to the races?"

"Of course we are," Sam said, having had no intention of it until she said that. "Are you a runner?"

"Yeah." She included Kappie in her smile, though with a little concern at how he always reacted like she was waving a gun in his face. "Just for fun though, I'm not that fast. I just need to do something that's not schoolwork for a few hours. Do you run?"

Only after demons, Sam thought, or _from_ demons. "I'm not that great either, but there's only so much Latin you can do in an afternoon, you know?"

God, that sounded stupid now that he'd said it. Kappie agreed nervously that he also wasn't gifted in track and field, yet the races sounded enjoyable. Eleanor Vychowski leaned over a desk to call that she was going to kick some ass and then the whole class degenerated into a fun bout of trash talking while the teacher was outside.

They found each other after last period and descended en masse upon the athletic field. Half were there to run, and half were there to watch them run. Other students stretched and kicked out their legs in the lanes, clearly not there to mess around like Sam and most of his class were. Adults divided them into grades and then by sex, Lucy up in the first heat with five other girls. She came in third, Sam clapping along with everyone else but aware that he was clapping a little harder. The first two girls had their names written down for a second heat to take place later.

Lucy came back to the stands and plopped down in the row beneath Sam. Her eyes were bright with merriment. "Told you I'm not that fast."

"Yeah, we all saw," shouted her older sister Hilary from higher up, and not in a nice way. Her friends laughed.

"I thought you looked good," Sam blurted, as Lucy looked crestfallen. "Really. Some of the others were burning out by the end, but you just kept going steady."

"Ninth grade boys!" a teacher called. Sorry to have to respond, he and Kappie lined up with three other guys and bolted at the whistle. They flew around the track with the sun in their faces on the first curve, Sam chugging along and coming in third with Kappie on his heels. Excused, they were sent back to the bleachers. Lucy passed back paper cups of water being dispensed for them.

"Thanks," Sam said.

"Drink up, fellow third," she said. The whistle blew and the sophomore girls were off. They cheered as the two in the lead duked it out, one first for a moment, overtaken by the second, the first pushing ahead once more. The rest of the girls were far behind.

"What is this local race?" Sam dared to ask Lucy.

"Oh, it's a big dorky Stonebridge tradition the day after Halloween. Penworth has a boy and girl representing each grade there to race and show off the school. The mayor is an alumnus who shakes their hands and there's always an article in the local paper about the Penworth champions."

"Good for college applications," someone said. "You need more than straight A's."

"Sorry!" Kappie cried in horror, having gone down for another cup of water and spilled some of it on Lucy's arm. "I'll get you a towel."

"Why do I freak him out so much?" Lucy whispered.

Sam didn't know what to say. Narrowing her eyes in bewilderment, she looked over the students and said, "A lot of them act like I'm going to bite. Is it Hilary?"

"I don't know Hilary really," Sam stalled. Other than she looked like a model on the cover of a magazine, and that she was as mean as a demon.

"Well, she's a pain," Lucy confessed. "Everyone probably expects me to be just like her. And you know what? She doesn't like me any more than the rest of you."

The whistle blew, Sam still stammering for something to say. Kappie returned with paper towels and profuse apologies. Lucy wiped off her arm and they watched the juniors have their first heats. The guy who came in third had a tantrum right there on the field. A bug had flown into his nose as he ran and he thought that the race should be redone. He would have been second without the bug! The adults shooed him off to the bleachers, where he sat in disgruntlement to watch the seniors race.

Then it was time for second heats, the two best of each grade and sex waiting on the field. Melissa Gramble took the win for freshman girls and Jon Swammen won for boys. Everyone applauded for them and the winning sophomores to follow.

Kappie glanced at his watch and Sam said, "It's almost done."

"No Fraud tonight," Kappie said. "I have to study."

So did Sam, but this was fun. The two junior boys lined up. One was whippet thin with a sharp face and the other was blocky but shockingly fast. That wasn't a runner's body, but he slipped over the course to the win during the first heat like he was sailing with a good wind. Sam said, "Who are they?"

"Allan and Braden," Lucy said, not indicating which was which. The bleachers were tense with excitement. The whistle blew and they charged away. Sam cheered for both since he knew neither. People around him shouted. "Go, Allan!" "Run, Braden, run!" "Speed of light!"

The sun was shining in all of their faces, hands going up to shield their eyes as the two boys leaned into the first curve. Sam yelled and yelled along with everyone else as the sun blotted out the runners, leaving only their green shorts and flashes of their legs visible.

And then there was only _one_ pair of green shorts,_ one_ pair of legs, the skinny guy running for dear life around that curve alone. Sam didn't understand what he had just seen, and he had seen a lot as a hunter's son. He stared at the empty lane where the blocky dude had just been.

But no one was there.


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter Seven**

When people saw things that they didn't understand, _couldn't_ understand, they clung to any explanation at all to force it to make sense. That was what happened with Braden Jenkins, who must have chickened out of the race and run around the corner of the building rather than continue with the heat. He knew that he was going to lose, that he couldn't keep up his crazy pace for a second time around the field. And rather than lose graciously to Allan, he charged off the field instead.

Which was all well and good, if he could be found to confirm it. Someone ran to his dorm room and the dining hall to check, but came back shaking his head.

Just hiding, students whispered in the bleachers. Embarrassed. Bad sportsmanship. The sun was at a bad angle, and they spoke with hands shielding their eyes. Some guy who'd gotten a bug up his nose and taken third place as a result demanded that the heat be held again. Which it was, and Mr. Bug Up The Nose won.

As the seniors raced, Dean watched. Sam was at his side by the entrance to the athletic field. Since Dean hadn't seen the guy disappear, he was inclined to file it under things he didn't care about if not for Sam's insistence. But he couldn't help asking for a third time, "Are you _sure_?"

"I'm sure!" Sam exclaimed in agitation. "Dean, he was _there_ in the second lane, going around this curve. If he'd run off the field, he would have gone right past you coming in!"

No one had passed Dean. "So he was just running and . . . poof?"

"Poof! They headed into the sun and then only Allan was there. He stopped running a few seconds later when he noticed Braden was gone. How did that _happen_?"

Dean didn't know. What would Dad do? Dad would get the facts of the case and hit the books, although Dean couldn't remember a case of poof. This was weird even for what they saw hunting. "Okay, so tell me who these kids are."

"The guy who poofed is Braden Jenkins. The guy he was racing is Allan Jordan. They're both juniors who wanted to represent Penworth at the Stonebridge race."

"And do you know anything else about either of these guys?"

"No, but Kappie will."

Kappie. That name killed Dean every time. "Well, then you find out everything you can from Kappie about both guys and I'll . . . I'll call Bobby about boys who go poof." Dean scanned the crowd and saw Allan Jordan sitting forlornly by a water dispenser. It had been close, the heat between him and Mr. Bug Up The Nose, and Mr. Bug barely eked out the win.

Dad would have talked to people, everyone here. Taken names and notes of what they thought happened, tried to reconstruct it in his mind. While Sam ran back to talk to Kappie, Dean strolled over to the water dispenser and poured himself a cup. High up in the stands were Hilary Warwick and Shawn Percival. They were laughing, and the only ones.

Sitting down near Allan, Dean said, "Good race, even so."

"That belonged to Braden," Allan said with a shake of his head. "Dude, where is he? I knew he had it. He knew he had it. How could he run off?"

"Maybe he didn't think he had it," Dean said.

Allan scoffed. Flakes of dandruff fell off his hair and shoulder. "You know what he is? He's like the idiot savant of running. We call him Speed of Light. Completely wrong form, bad posture, breathes through his nose, and he nails it every time. It makes the coach crazy, 'cause Braden says you don't fix what works. He won't even buy better shoes than those crummy cheap Splitters that leave their S everywhere on the track. So how could he leave? He wanted this so badly."

"Did you?"

"Want this? Everyone wants it. I represented Penworth my sophomore year and it was fun. You get so much attention from girls. Braden didn't try out last year, but he and I started racing afterwards . . ." Allan trailed off.

Banging internally at his brain to shake a question loose, Dean said, "So it must have pissed you off, knowing you wouldn't get it this year. Made you hate him."

"Hate Braden?" Allan's eyes widened on Dean. "Oh, you're new here, aren't you? Braden and I are friends, man! We run together three times a week. I can't be jealous of a guy who's only good at one thing. He can't even get off academic probation. Not that bright, but he's a nice guy and he runs like a madman. This race belonged to him, and now Travis Lane has it."

"Couldn't beat him a second time?"

"Nah, I choked. And Travis, he and I are always duking it out for first. He's real good, not genius good like Braden, but real good like me."

Dean couldn't think of much else to say. Gesturing to the people in the stands watching the latest race, he commented idly, "Funny, I came in just as you guys were coming around that curve, but I didn't see Braden go by."

"He's fast. Bat out of hell fast, speed of light _fast_. I didn't see him go either. The sun was in my face so bad." Allan sighed and stood up. Flakes fell off. Noticing them, he brushed off more from his shoulder and they smeared gray on his fingers like ashes. "Screw this, I'm going to find him myself. He isn't so dumb that he forgot where the field is."

Dean talked to other students, although he just couldn't make himself climb to the top to talk to Hilary and Shawn. Dad probably would have done it anyway, but what was Dean going to get from them save attitude? And Dad wanted him to behave himself, which wasn't likely to happen with Shawn.

People started to leave, the last race having ended and reality setting in that homework couldn't be put off forever. When Dean was the last one there, he came off the stands and walked the lane where Braden had been. The track was scuffed from the day, but he spotted an S from the dude's cheap sneakers. Dean followed the S marks from the starting point. There had only been three races after that one, the rematch of Allan and Travis, and the two senior races. So a lot of the S's were still there.

The sun was getting lower, so he broke into a jog to hurry this along. The dude had probably just run off the field and given the win to his friend, or thought he was. A weird way of being nice. Dean curved around with the track and followed the S treads. The guy landed hard on his left foot, so those were deeper, and lighter on his right, so those were barely noticeable.

He spotted another S near the entrance, a good hard left-foot S, unmistakably Braden's. Squinting, Dean slowed and searched for the light one from the right shoe. That must have been scuffed over in another race. Dean moved on, searching for the next deep S.

But there wasn't one. Trailing back to the last one, he looked around the field. No one was there. He got down on his hands and knees and stared at that last S. Then he crawled forward, his eyes sweeping from the lane on his left to the lane on his right. No light S immediately followed, and there was no hard S beyond. He went a whole meter on his knees before getting up and jogging once more. There wasn't a single S on the track, not until he got back to the starting point of the race.

He followed the S marks again to the last one, where he stopped. Noticing gray smears on his hands, he brushed off on the grass closest to the last hard S. More gray came away from there. Allan had a really weird, and also prolific and disgusting dandruff problem.

If Braden had gone by Dean, there should be a stream of S treads going that way. Dean should have thought of that earlier. Rushing over, he walked the ground with excruciating care. He even spotted his own footprints coming in. But there weren't any S treads.

Not anywhere.


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter Eight**

"And so I encourage anyone struggling with stress to reach out, not hold back," the principal said as the student body sat in the dining hall over supper. "It's hard to imagine that adults might understand where you're coming from, but trust me, I've been there. We all have. Don't let yourself get overwhelmed."

Sam ate while everyone nodded and agreed that school could be stressful. It could send someone literally fleeing for the hills at times. But school wasn't stressing Sam in particular. A boy fleeing right into the sun and disappearing for a whole day now? That stressed him more. Dean caught his eye and Sam nodded.

After The Fraud ended that night and Kappie went to sleep, Sam lay awake and watched the time. At midnight, he rose and slipped out of the room. Bypassing the elevator, he crept up the stairs to the third floor and tapped on Dean's door. It jerked open and Dean said, "What's wrong with you? Just come in."

"It was polite," Sam said defensively. Okay, then he wouldn't be polite. "Let's go."

Braden's room was on the second floor. He was one of the lucky juniors to be awarded a single, the excess determined by a lottery system. Since the school was on the honor code, none of the doors locked. They let themselves in, Dean closing the curtains before hissing at Sam to turn on the light.

It looked like Braden was going to come back at any second. A book was open on the desk, his blanket was rumpled, and clothes were hanging askew in the closet. There was a calendar nailed to the wall despite the rule against nails, and he had MOM/DAD VISIT written up for the next weekend. Dean turned around to look at everything. "Seems normal to me. Did Kappie tell you anything?"

"Braden's the first in his family to come to Penworth, and his family is pretty rich," Sam said. "Everyone says that's how he got in, since he doesn't need financial aid. It wasn't for his grades."

"He's a dope, I hear," Dean said, going to the dresser to inspect the contents. "A fast dope. What about Allan?"

"He's a Third Gen, and Kappie didn't have anything bad to say about him." Sam opened the desk drawers. Papers were crumpled inside, full of crossed-out calculations. The trashcan to the side of the desk was overflowing with the same. "What are we looking for?"

"I don't know. Something weird."

Something weird. Sam rifled through the papers as Dean said, "Okay, so a guy vanishes into thin air during a competition. What do you think?"

"Who benefits?" Sam said automatically. "It would have been Allan. He won by default, or he would have if the third place hadn't challenged for a reheat."

"Allan claims that he and Braden are friends," Dean said. He opened the bottom drawer and winced.

"What?" Sam asked.

"Braden puts his dirty undies in here," Dean said in disgust. "Allan knew he was likely to lose that race, so he poofed Braden to win? That would take some pretty serious magic mojo, I'd think. But I looked in Allan's room earlier and there wasn't anything more interesting than in here."

"That it happened at the race could be a coincidence?" Sam guessed. "Maybe someone else has a grudge against this guy."

"But there's no reason that I've heard, and I've been talking to juniors all day," Dean argued. He closed the drawer of dirty underwear and searched the top shelf of the closet. "Braden didn't have enemies, and everyone confirms what Allan told me about those two being friends. Friendly competitors. Braden doesn't have a girlfriend and wasn't eyeing anyone in particular. He's just sort of a doofus. No one's got beef with him."

"A demon could have targeted him for some reason we don't know." Sam pawed through the trashcan for clues, and found only fifty attempts at the same algebra problem.

Dean slid the closet door over to check the shelf on the other side. "A demon might want a meatsuit, but that doesn't make someone vanish. A vampire wants blood and wouldn't be hanging around a high school athletic field in the afternoon. A werewolf would leave a mess and not in daylight like that. Most of what we see . . . they attack when a person is alone. Vulnerable. Not in front of seventy spectators!"

Sam felt like Dean might be disbelieving this. "I know what I saw."

"Wasn't questioning you. His shoeprints vanish on the track."

"Do you think we should call Dad?"

"No," Dean said shortly. "He doesn't want my help, I don't want his help. I called Bobby."

Sam unfolded multiple attempts at another problem. This guy really was a dope. "What did he say?"

"To stick my nose into my schoolbooks, 'cause boys don't go poof."

Well, that wasn't helpful. They looked under the bed and the mattress as well, searched pockets and moved out the desk to peer behind it. Sam was back in bed twenty minutes later, the two not having come across a thing wrong with that room except that its owner wasn't in it. People had whispered all through dinner that Braden ran away from school, unable to keep up with the academic load. With the contents of the desk and trashcan, Sam would find it perfectly plausible if the guy hadn't vanished right in front of him.

Tomorrow, he was going to look through the archives in the library for other weird happenings at this school, like the boy who froze in a freak storm. While tossing and turning, he saw that Kappie's eyes were open. The moonlight through the window made them glint. "Sorry, did I wake you?" Sam asked.

"Why did you go upstairs?" Kappie asked.

Shocked that he'd been followed without noticing, Sam said, "Wanted to see if Braden was back. It's just too weird."

"Whatever happened, it happened," Kappie said.

"A guy vanished and you don't care?"

"I do care. But that's what happens to kids who stand out. That's exactly what happens. Something weird. Like Ricardo last year. He was brilliant, played four or five instruments like magic. The door slammed by itself on his fingers so hard that they were amputated. So don't stand out, Sam, not for anything." And he turned away to face the darkness.


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter Nine**

The police came to inspect the disappearance, and soon concluded that Braden Jenkins ran away. Dean heard students behind him in class whispering about it. Then a crumpled piece of paper hit his head, LOSER written inside. It was compliments of Adam Baron-Clumb, Shawn's best friend. Both were in this class, and usually in trouble for talking. Adam was as geeky looking as Shawn was blocky, always gabbing about the fingering for his trumpet and showing the girls in a really lewd way. Dean saluted the guy with his third finger and promptly received another demerit. Bobby was going to be able to paper the walls of his house with demerits by the time Dad finished this case.

Well, Dean had a case of his own. He wasn't getting anywhere with it, but that was how cases went sometimes. You got nowhere and nowhere and nowhere, and then _somewhere_. He'd soldier through those nowheres. Nothing could stay a secret forever, not if you chased it long enough.

Since he hadn't found answers in Braden's life, he was looking in other places. Allan was the obvious suspect, but the more he looked at Allan, the less there was to find. What about Allan's girlfriend? Maybe she wanted to make sure he represented Penworth again for the kudos it bestowed on her in extension. Her name was Isabella Duncan, a skinny Fourth Gen who was as bland as the dining hall tapioca. Dean had searched her room for signs of witchcraft and even read the diary under her pillow. The girl's deepest secret was that she wanted to go to Harvard when the last six generations of her family had gone to Yale. She also liked cats and pizza. Dean nearly fell asleep over the diary, and pushed it back under the pillow convinced that whatever happened to Braden had nothing to do with Allan's girlfriend.

Where did he go from there? Thinking about it kept him awake that night, and finally drove him out to wander the school taking EMF readings. He started with the athletic field and discovered zilch. Zilch everywhere else, too. Whatever caused this to happen didn't appear to be of ghostly origin. Plenty of kids had died at this school, however, so it was a reasonable hypothesis. It just didn't pan out, and sent him back to his room in bewilderment.

Everything was messed up, his blanket and sheets ripped off the mattress, books knocked off the desk, the clothes torn from the hangers. They'd probably come in to smack him around, found him gone, and roughed up his room instead. Dean checked under the bed and in the closet to make sure no one was in there, and then he cleaned everything up. Real civilized school they had here, full of the leaders of tomorrow. From now on when he was in his room, he'd tilt the chair under the doorknob so he wouldn't have to worry about these jackasses welcoming themselves in to rough him up as well.

It was real easy to sneak archived materials from the library, since they weren't set up with security strips like the books were. Whoever had been in here hadn't found his cache under the dresser. Too wired to sleep, he pulled them out and spread the materials over the floor. Something kept drawing him back to that lone woman in the cemetery. A Stonebridge paper from that year mentioned that she had been murdered, but was scant on the details. Found in the teachers' quarters with a mortal wound. That was an old-timey way of saying it. No suspects.

Old-timey. He should talk to the gardener. Old people knew things. And since Dean had a demerit, he had a perfectly good reason to be in the gardener's company. So he'd do that, schedule some hours to gather trash and pick the dude's brain.

Now he had something concrete to do, and that relaxed him. He'd call Bobby again too, since Bobby owed him one. At least some research into how a guy ran into the sun and went poof!

Dean paused. Funny how Braden's nickname in sports was Speed of Light, and he'd vanished while running into the light. That was probably a coincidence. It also might not be.

Picking up another article, he read more about the dead English teacher Elizabeth Dorman. She died in her second year of teaching at Penworth. There was the usual yadda-yadda-yadda, beloved by all, a radiant light in the field of education, and she would be missed forever.

He glanced at the picture. Yeah, she'd been hot. Dark hair in a bun, bowtie lips stern in a pretty face, and the high collar of her dress pushed right up under her chin. The article continued below the picture, and it was more complete than the others he'd read. Her throat had been cut. No one heard a scream, just a thump that wasn't investigated until the following morning when she didn't show up to class. The window was open. So this might not be a supernatural case. It certainly didn't have the hallmarks of weird like Braden's did. A jealous boyfriend, a freak stalker, just a crazy person going through could have done this.

In the article was a remark from one of the dead woman's family members that Elizabeth had been unhappy at Penworth. But there was no reason given as to why. The police investigation turned up little. The bloody blade was found outside the wall. It had come from the school's very own kitchen. And that was as far as the police made it with that case, which was pretty much nowhere at all. Dean put everything back under the dresser, tilted the chair under his doorknob, and went to bed.

Maybe Dad would come back tomorrow, tell them to hop in the car. And maybe Dean would say no, he had a job to do here, an important job, and walk away. Dad would be mad about that, having to treat Dean like a hunter instead of a child. Dean wouldn't care. Being an adult meant he didn't have to run around at his father's every beck and call. This was _his_ case, and he'd see it through. His last thought before he fell asleep was speed of light, and ashes.

Author's Note: We have a Speed of Light Lamb in the pasture. He always looks like he's on the verge of spilling onto his face and cartwheeling out of control. His mad speed is certainly brag-worthy among his forty little compatriots, however his aim is not. While soaring along a few evenings ago, his legs a blur and his friends eating his dust, Speed of Light ran squarely into his mother's butt. (She took it in stride.)


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter Ten**

Some problems were loud.

A rock in your sneaker was a loud problem. A vampire in your town was a loud problem, too. Those were problems that couldn't be overlooked or dismissed for very long. A pointed edge jamming into your heel painfully with every footfall, big holes in necks of bodies scattered around, responses to those problems came fast since they were so loud.

But some problems were quiet, and those were trickier. At his last school (or was it the one before?), Sam had had a friend named Jack. Jack's dad was a P.E. teacher. He was a real fit guy, running in the early mornings and biking on the weekends. He didn't smoke, rarely drank, and always ate healthy food. No one knew about the cancer growing silently inside him until it was too late to do anything about it. Nothing could be done, since no one suspected a problem was even there.

Penworth School had a quiet problem sort of like that.

Sam did not have a lot of spare time around seven classes, but what he read in the archives made him find time. The last pages of his binder were slowly filling with notes of odd incidents, which he had to redo to put in consecutive order. Some of them might not have been important, but they could be eliminated later. Right now he just had to gather material and see what stood out.

What stood out was a lot. The oldest incidents were from the late 1800s, just years after the school's opening. There were only two in that time period. Both involved boys in the junior class. August Hilman, son of a prominent local businessman, had struck himself to death. Sam dug and dug for more information, since he couldn't figure out exactly how a guy managed to do that. At last he found a more complete description from a witness. August had literally punched himself into a skull fracture in front of his entire classroom and died.

Then there was Sidney Lyon, who didn't die but started hearing voices and went crazy. He was hauled off screaming to an institution. That might just have been schizophrenia, but it reduced the junior class by another member. There were only fifteen in that grade as it was.

Then there was nothing of interest for years. Sam read issues of the school newspaper and couldn't find a thing. He didn't make note of the illness in 1905, since that wiped out people everywhere and wasn't remotely mysterious.

It started up again in 1921, a rash of ugly accidents and weird incidents including the teacher's murder. The rest involved students only. One vanished, and was suspected of being a runaway. Another drank water until he died. A third was reading in the library when he caught fire. It was believed that he had been smoking in secret, but no evidence of that was found. A fourth boy drowned in a pond once located just outside the school wall, and it took six men to lift his body to the surface since it was as heavy as lead. Sam kept reading and taking notes of these things, baffled as to the common link.

Then it stopped at the end of the spring term in 1932. There was nothing unusual in the 1933 issues, nor in the years after that. It wasn't until 1940 that something strange happened at Penworth, when a boy was found suffocated in a chimney. No one knew why he was in there, but since it was December, they assumed he was playing a Santa prank and got stuck. 1941 passed without incident, but in 1942, a boy who knew better was kicked in the head and killed by a horse. Sam drew brackets over the time periods, a little one for the late 1890s, a bigger one for 1921-1932, and an even bigger one for 1940-1955. There wasn't an incident every single year within those brackets, but there was absolutely nothing going on in the years that separated one bracket from another.

A fourth bracket started at 1965, and ran until 1983. Then there was a pause to 1990. He looked at that gap and wondered what set it off. He couldn't deduce any significance from the numbers. The gaps were getting smaller, and now the incidents involved girls as victims, too. The last two years had had a sudden, spontaneous case of severe dyslexia that left a straight-A girl unable to read, and a boy named Emory Corvelle who died of a heart attack at eighteen years old doing push-ups on the lawn. That kind of stuff happened anywhere, but the guy was checked out thoroughly by his doctor before school started and everything was fine. Ricardo who played a bunch of instruments lost his fingers when the door to his room slammed shut on them. Five times. With no one touching it. Sam ended his list with Braden's disappearance and looked over his work for clues.

This school was in a cycle again, its fifth cycle of weird happenings. Again he went over the numbers while Kappie worked diligently at his Latin. Sam needed to be studying, but this was important, too. He looked over the names of the victims and wondered if relatives of those unfortunates in later generations were still coming to Penworth. But August Hilman had been the only son in his family; no Lyons ever showed their faces here again. The Tell family, the Runzie family, the Morgan family . . . they hadn't continued to send their sons, or more recently their daughters, to this school.

There were so many students at the school now that one missing face like Braden's didn't catch the eye. It was quite a different story when this began. Sam went back to the picture of August Hilman's class when they graduated a year after his death. It was so small! Thirteen black-and-white faces looked solemnly up to Sam. He read the names under the picture. Neville Miller. Charles Warwick. Henry Percival. Joseph Baron. Joseph Gernon. Albert Dillinger. Thomas Cecil. Lewis Irving. Claude Herman. Otto Patricks. The page was torn, wiping out the names of the last three boys.

It was strange to look at Charles Warwick and know that this was Lucy's great-great-grandfather. Something about him reminded Sam more of Hilary. It was in the eyes, arrogance. The other boys looked like regular guys, but he stood slightly apart and straighter, like he wanted to be noticed by people looking at the picture even a hundred years in the future.

_Lucy_. She had asked Sam to sit with her at dinner. He remembered that just as Kappie's watch beeped. Sam flew about like lightning to put everything away and get over to the dining hall, his pulse at such a clamor that it muted the weirdness of this school to silence.


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter Eleven**

He struck out with the gardener, who was taking time off to visit a very ill relative in Ohio. But he hit a home run, surprisingly, with the Dorman family. That he didn't see coming. Eight Dormans were listed in the phone book, and he wasn't holding out hope that any of them might be related to the teacher, or have any information if they were. After all, that murder happened practically seventy years ago.

The first two Dormans hadn't known what on earth he was talking about, one hanging up on him and the second staying on line long enough to explain that she and her family were new to the area. The third call was to a Dorman, Mary. The woman who picked it up sounded quite aged, with a frail and quavering voice. Dean hardly needed a cover story about a cold case being reopened, since the woman was frail and quavering but also garrulous as hell. Elizabeth Dorman had been her much older sister. Mary didn't remember her that well, being only ten when her sister died.

She invited him over to her assisted living community. Not at two, he couldn't come at two, because that was when _The Wheel of Life_ was on. Not at four, he couldn't come at four either, since that was when _Love's Riddles_ started up. But there wasn't anything good on at three, so he should come then. Did he like _The Wheel of Life_ and _Love's Riddles_? Dean agreed that he liked them. Watching Dad for so many years had taught him that there was only one right answer to questions like that. Since Mary Dorman liked them, they were the greatest shows on earth.

At three o'clock on Thursday, he entered the day room at Sweet Briar Retirement Home. Gray heads and bald heads and white heads were clustered around the television in a side room, and more were at tables scattered through the day room itself. They were playing cards, working on crosswords, or just chatting, and one man in a wheelchair was sitting apart and looking quietly out the window. The aides assumed that Dean was someone's grandson and let him right in. With a winning smile, he whispered, "I forgot my glasses. Will you point out Mary Dorman to me?"

The white-haired woman was involved in a card game and waved him off until she threw down a winning hand. Everyone at the table moaned as she gathered up chips in triumph. Then she crowed to Dean, "How's that for you?"

"Don't you spend that in one place," Dean warned. She laughed and got up, taking his arm in an iron grip and motioning him to a table in the corner. The only one over there was the man in the wheelchair.

Her steps were tiny, and carefully laid like she was going from one rock in a pond to another. He pulled out a chair and she sat in it gratefully. Taking the one beside her, Dean said, "We aren't going to bug that man, are we?"

"What, Frank? Frank? Frank!" Mary slapped the table. The man didn't respond. "He won't wear his hearing aids. They work just fine, but he doesn't like to listen to people gab so he won't put them in." She adjusted her feet under the table and kicked him on accident. "I'm sorry about that. I was born with some muscle problems in my legs."

"Not a problem," Dean said.

"My, you police officers are getting younger and younger every year!" Beaming at him, she smoothed back her hair. "So you're curious about my sister. Well, join the club, Officer. We were all curious, and my parents died curious. The only ones who weren't as curious were the police back then. They were sure that it was just a random strike. There had been a similar case two cities over and five years before, some crazy man crawling through a window to slit a throat for no reason at all. He was caught a few years after my sister died and denied doing it. But he was a crazy person, so who knows how much that denial was worth? Now my sister, she taught at Havenhill for two years before moving to Penworth. Havenhill closed, but she loved it there."

"I take it she didn't love Penworth quite as much."

"Oh, she loathed it! I was too young to remember much at the time, but my parents talked about it on and off throughout the rest of their lives. It troubled them so. She wasn't in trouble with any men, do you understand? Not Elizabeth! The police also floated that theory and my parents wouldn't have any of it. Some of us," her eyebrows waggled a little lasciviously, "weren't quite so prim and proper in our twenties. Or ever! But Elizabeth was a lady through and through. No, she did not like Penworth, not at all. It was the cheating."

"You said that she was a lady," Dean said in confusion.

"I did! Not that kind of cheating. Academic. There a right nasty ring of boys in that school while she was there, cheaters and bullies and thieves. I do remember her talking about that, and I was scandalized. These were the sons of our local businessmen, successful fellows with fine homes, and some of their sons were behaving like a bunch of common hooligans. Sneaking out to throw rocks at windows, bothering women in the street, lollygagging about instead of doing their studies . . . Elizabeth caught them cheating on one of her exams and she had just had it. She dragged Archie and Clarence out and straight to the principal's office. Just disgusted. Clarence, now he was a vicious piece of work, and the other one wasn't any better. Both of them were expelled."

"When your sister was murdered-"

The woman rode right over him. "But there were other boys causing trouble, so kicking out those two didn't make much difference. She told my father not a week before she died that there was something downright unnatural going on in this school. The way boys kept having accidents . . . it bothered her greatly. She was keeping her eyes and ears open all the time, trying to figure out who or what was causing it. It was the Devil's work, she said. And she was starting to figure it all out when she was murdered. Dad wished that she hadn't snooped. He thought it might have kept her alive."

"Do you have any idea what-"

"A Devil's Club!" the old woman hissed, her eyes bright with intensity. "That was what she said goes on at Penworth! Well, my father didn't believe her. He worked for the Percival store and didn't believe that for a red-hot minute. Henry Percival was the _nicest_ man, sweet as sweet can be. He had gone to Penworth, too. A sad man, Henry, under that niceness. He worked all the time, rarely saw his family . . . Dad said it was like the man was ridden with guilt, and Dad couldn't imagine what someone as nice as Henry could ever have done. His son Frank now, he was having some trouble, but Devil worship? Yet my sister was certain. Those boys were worshipping the Devil. She heard them doing it in the library basement one night. Well, she wasn't going to work at a school full of kids doing that! She planned to turn all of that information over to the principal along with her resignation. But she never got the chance."

A Devil's club. Dean didn't know if she was serious or if this was the product of an overactive imagination, or maybe dementia. "Would you happen to know-"

She grabbed his wrist and turned it to check the time. "I've got to get to the television room! Betty and her girls always hog the sofa." Getting up carefully with her hands braced on the table, she called to her friends who were still playing cards. They stood in excitement for whatever _Love's Riddles_ was, one of them weaving through the tables to help Mary get there. Dean called out another question, but the old woman was already tottering away.


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter Twelve**

Every time he thought of Lucy Warwick, he wanted to shout. He thought about her a lot. Once at night he was shocked to discover that he wanted Dad's case to take a little longer, just so Sam wouldn't have to leave Penworth. He always forgot how weird of a place it was when those mismatched eyes were on his mind. Lucy and Sam ate dinner together every night.

She found him in the cemetery one afternoon, where he was making a list of the names on the headstones. Sneaking over here wasn't hard. Students were allowed to go to the athletic field after classes to run or play catch. So he'd just put on his gym clothes and let himself out, then veered right to the cemetery instead of left to the field.

He was so involved in his work that he hadn't even heard her sneak up behind him. Then she said, "BOO!" and he almost jumped out of his skin. Sneaking up on a hunter's son in a cemetery was a bad idea, but she didn't know that. He was just relieved that he hadn't hit her in reflex. The thought made him cringe.

"What are you doing?" she asked about the list.

He folded it hastily. "Oh, it's nothing." Fumbling about for a plausible excuse, he added, "I'm just into history."

Lucy brushed her hair back over her shoulder. The simple movement made his heart hammer. Looking over the headstones, Lucy said, "Doesn't this place spook you?"

"No, not really," Sam said. "There doesn't seem to be any ghosts at this school."

She laughed, finding that funny even though he hadn't intended it to be. "You think there would be with all of these dead kids. So much unresolved business. Isn't that why ghosts stick around? They still think they've got something to do?"

"They stick around for a lot of reasons," Sam said. "Probably, I mean. For revenge. Sometimes they're trying to give warnings, or they might haunt because they're confused. Stupid people become stupid ghosts. They just don't know that they've died."

Her eyebrow lifted. "How do you know so much about ghosts?"

"I- I watch a lot of television."

"I make you nervous."

Sam felt blood rise to his cheeks. Before he could come up with an answer, she said, "You make me nervous."

He was intrigued. "Why?"

"Because you treat me like a regular person, when everyone else trips over their own feet to rush away. So you must be brave to take on a Warwick girl." She plucked the list from his hand. Unfolding it, she skimmed the names. He had almost finished. "Funny the names that aren't on here. You'd think in five generations, there would have been a Warwick. I'm something like the fortieth Warwick to attend this school."

"Well, this cemetery only buried people up to the fifties," Sam said. "And other kids probably died but their bodies were taken to family cemeteries."

"Do you ever wonder what happened to all of them?" she asked.

"Yeah," Sam said, even though he knew the stories behind many of the names on the list. Unable to stand the thought of losing her interest, he pointed to one. "That guy caught fire in the library."

"In the _library_? What was he doing?"

"Smoking, I guess."

"I guess that predates stop-drop-and-roll, but you'd think it would be instinctive. Maybe his clothes were really flammable." She pointed to the name he had just written down. "I know that one, August Hilman. God, that guy still lives on in Warwick family lore."

"How so?"

"He was such a jackass, he and his little lackey Sydney. It's sad that that's how he's remembered five generations later, for being a bully. He was the biggest jerk in the school back then and made everybody's lives miserable. The administration didn't do anything because his family's money paid for a new classroom building. They were just riding it out until graduation. But it was hell on the other students. He beat on them something awful. I don't know any more than that, other than August died in their junior year and no one could even fake a tear at his funeral. He was that much of a dick. My great-great grandfather told his kids that, who told their kids and down to my father mentioning it to me. He told me never to take guff off an August Hilman." Passing back the paper, she added, "Not that the opportunity is going to arise. See my aforementioned comment about everyone tripping to get away from me."

"All except me," Sam said.

"All except you," she echoed with half a smile. "I know my family is basically one generation of assholes after another. My dad's a dick, and Hilary is his carbon copy. I wish she hadn't gotten the lead part in the school play last year. It made her even more of a dick. She thinks she's a star. At least it was by default. The girl who got the lead had such bad allergies from this part of Pennsylvania that she had to transfer to another school." Lucy nodded to the list. "Well, finish up, Mr. History."

He scribbled the last two names on the paper. Wind blew through the trees, shifting the light over the graves. That made him think of Braden sprinting into the sun and disappearing. Without running the question through a politeness filter like he should have, Sam blurted, "Why aren't you an asshole? If everyone in your family is?"

"I don't know," Lucy said contemplatively, like she wondered herself. "I just don't want to be. My parents scream at each other all the time, and so do my aunts and uncles. My dad's parents are going deaf and they _still_ scream at each other all day long. My cousins are just like Hilary. We have tons of money, so we're used to getting everything. But you know what? It's awful hanging out with my family. All they do is fight over who got what in whichever inheritance, who said what about how they decorated their Christmas tree, who donated the most money to a charity and how great it makes them. It just goes on and on with them tearing each other down. Why can't we just like each other? What's your family like?"

"It's just me and my brother, and our dad," Sam said. They'd had some doozies of fights themselves. But it had never been over anything so stupid as how they decorated their Christmas tree.

"Hilary told me before I started here that I could rule this school, that it was easy and she would teach me how," Lucy said. "I told her that I didn't want to rule it. I just want some friends. She said that was the wrong answer and has been even more of a jackass to me ever since. And that's my family in a nutshell. One day I'm going to marry a guy who doesn't yell, or brag all the time about how special he is. I want a guy who can give to the world without needing a plaque commending him for greatness."

It was time for dinner, but he had to change into his regular clothes first. Feeling like a fool, Sam said, "May I walk you back?"

She looked expectantly at his arm. He didn't know why, and then she sighed and lifted it a little. Wrapping her arm around it, she said, "Are you a yeller, Sam Winchester?"

"No," Sam said.

"I didn't think so," Lucy said, and they walked back to school with his heart shouting.

Author's Note:

(For those of you who like the animal updates) The three bottle baby lambs have been adopted onto a farm, which is currently in the midst of a custody battle over six little ducklings. Mom Duck laid the eggs and promptly ditched them to live a life of leisure within the neighbor's pool. Chickens discovered the eggs and sat upon them until they hatched. The newborn ducklings naturally imprinted upon the chickens and now follow them everywhere around the farm, to the horror of Mom Duck who tries to herd them away. Her attempts are entirely unsuccessful, as the ducklings have no idea who this strange creature is and why she wants them to quit their chicken mothers to hang out with her.

(For those of you who are also writers) What I wish someone had told me long, long ago: while going through the editing process with your books, hunting down those pesky missing words and silly mix-ups like _were_ for _where_, read it out loud. I started doing that last year, one chapter a day in a slow march through a trilogy, and caught so many more mistakes than I ever did by reading quietly. While doing precisely that with another book yesterday, I discovered a sentence that contained no verb at all. (Face/palm)


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter Thirteen**

The problem with the library was that it didn't have a basement.

Dean was exasperated to learn that, having found Mary Dorman a little weird but pretty present mentally. He walked all around the library trying every door and even consulted the librarian. No, there wasn't a basement, there had never been a basement, and why was he asking about a basement?

"I'm doing a report on the history of basements," Dean fibbed. He left the library to check around outside and see if she was lying.

But she wasn't. They couldn't have been worshiping the Devil in a room that did not exist. He glared at the building. High up, a head was moving around in the archives. It looked like Sam. Letting himself back inside, Dean went upstairs in a temper. The second he spotted his brother in an aisle, he exploded, "This school doesn't have a library with a basement!"

"Oh," Sam said, startled. "Maybe she was mistaken. It _was_ a really long time ago."

"But she didn't seem that batty."

"It's not batty, Dean, it's seventy years. She was a little girl at the time. She probably just remembered part of it wrong. If that's what was going on, maybe it happened somewhere else."

"Do any of these buildings have basements?" Dean asked.

"Possibly," Sam said. "You'd have to look at-"

"Shh!" hissed Kappie, who was sitting at a carrel with a mountain of books. "Some of us have to work!"

_Kappie._ Dean said, "Listen, Kaplan of the third generation, I have a question to bounce off you. Why doesn't this library have a basement when I've been told by a random old woman that it does?"

"I don't know," Kappie said. "Maybe she meant the old library."

Dean crossed the aisle fast to get to the carrel. "What old library?"

"This one was built when my grandfather went here back in the fifties. The last one wasn't big enough, so they changed it into administration. Now, do you mind? I have a lot of work to get through."

Suddenly, Dean's life felt a lot brighter. He slapped Kappie on the back in thanks and went downstairs with a new place to look. For now, he would scope out the exterior. Walking around inside in hunt for a basement was going to get him stopped by too many adults.

Administration was a building crammed full of tiny offices for faculty and staff. Though two stories, it was not a big place. Dean ambled around it like he was just taking a walk. Through the windows, people worked diligently at computers.

It stuck in his head what Mary Dorman said about the first generation Percival being a nice guy. The apple had fallen far from the tree in the intervening generations with Shawn. A little research on Sam's part had turned up the full names of the boys that Elizabeth Dorman got expelled: Archibald Warwick and Clarence Dillinger. Archibald was part of the second generation of Warwicks to go through, and the fourth in line of six sons belonging to Charles Warwick. Charles had graduated from Penworth in 1897 and married in 1902, churning out four daughters before the sons started to arrive.

The first generation Dillinger was Albert, who married in 1906 and sent his two sons to Penworth. Arthur had started in 1922 and Clarence in 1926. But only Arthur got his diploma. He'd gone on to be a success, a hotshot lawyer eventually elected to Congress. Clarence started a lot of businesses doomed to fail, and a lot of marriages doomed to fail as well. Sam had pieced together that information from local papers, which recorded those business ventures, marriages, children, and divorces. The man died in the 1940s having accomplished nothing in comparison to his far more illustrious older brother.

He saw nothing of interest along the side of the administration building. Dean went around to inspect the back. In the far corner were storm doors almost covered by bushes and tall grass. There were offices on the sides of those doors, both with big windows looking out right where he was. Only one office was occupied at the moment, and that person was facing away. Dean stole along for a better look. The doors were chained shut.

Damn. That might be something, and he wanted to investigate this more. But he'd need to cut those chains, and even with cutters, he couldn't do that with some teacher in an office overhead. This was a job for night, when everyone in the building had gone home and he had the dark for cover.

The gardener likely had cutters in his shed. Dean couldn't be seen rummaging around there either at this time. There were still too many eyes on campus.

It was hard to control the impulse to slice through the chains and investigate whatever was down there right this instant. But that was the mistake of some overeager novice hunter, making the case fit him instead of him fitting into the case. He wasn't going to be that guy. He'd heard enough stories between Bobby and Dad about _that guy_, the one who hunted dumb. Hunting was an art in a way, not a job on an assembly line. Dean didn't want to be _that guy_ that Bobby told stories about one day to instruct rookies.

He would go to dinner and act like normal at the table, the spoiled brats of this school going on like they always did around him. Adam would egg on Shawn to peg Dean with a bread roll, and Hilary ask if his college plans involved a major in cashiering with a minor in driving a garbage truck. Then Dean would go to his room and study like a good little boy. But once the dorm was quiet, he was coming back out here. If this school had a Devil's club, whatever that really meant, it was soon going to have the cover ripped off its ugly face.

And then it would be put down.


	14. Chapter 14

**Chapter Fourteen**

Sam didn't want to be working a case. But that didn't mean the case disappeared.

He wanted to keep on liking this school, since it had been good to him. He had sharp teachers and interesting classes, a friend in Kappie and a girl who passed him notes in Latin. Then he corrected her grammar and passed it back, and she corrected his and tossed it onto his desk again. Sam had kept one of those notes that passed back and forth for the hour of class. It was in his sock drawer so no one would find it.

Yet liking this school didn't mean its secrets went away, and Penworth had a lot of secrets. The deeper he dug, the more he uncovered. Even the most innocent, throwaway comments had deeper stories, such as Lucy's offhand tale about her sister winning the lead in the school play last year by default. The competition had been Sabrina White, a senior who blew everyone out of the water with her audition. Although she had been at this school since her freshman year with no health conditions to speak of, not long after winning the part she came down with a case of severe allergies that only alleviated when she left the area.

Sam had gotten the rest of the story. _Allergies_ meant mushrooms literally growing in her throat! He saw the pictures and wanted to throw up at the thought of those clotting his airway. Sabrina nearly died in the cafeteria. Now she went to a college in Connecticut. Without allergies. The strangest part about it was that the mushrooms started drying up and dying on the ambulance ride to the Stonebridge Hospital across town. Once the hospital cut them out and released her, she'd come back to school and they promptly grew back. After she nearly died a second time, she stopped coming back.

If two first generation students at this school hated each other, they avoided one another, spread gossip, or had a fistfight. If a first generation and a third generation squabbled, it was only more of the same but with more ostracizing, since the first generation had few to back him up. Lenny Richards and Elliot Jacom were fourth generations who made each other's lives hell, carrying on a conflict that started with their third generation fathers.

Nothing weird happened to either of them. It was just regular school stuff. The weirdness happened much more often when one of the people involved was a Fifth Gen. Like Hilary Warwick, who wanted the part that the second generation Sabrina White won. On his notes of weird incidents, Sam was adding stars by Fifth Gen names if one was involved.

If a student wanted something that Lucy did too . . . Sam was overcome with dislike for himself at the thought. Whatever this was, it didn't involve her. Nor did it involve a nice Fifth Gen like Stuart Miller. And what about Calvin and Rebecca Dillinger? They were Fifth Gens and cousins, but perfectly pleasant people.

There was something here that Sam wasn't seeing. Actually, at the moment there were plenty of things that he wasn't seeing. Holding the flashlight steady while Dean clipped the chains, Sam looked around nervously. He didn't want a demerit, and Dad was going to be in a terrible mood if they got expelled for vandalism.

Tossing the clippers aside, Dean unwrapped the chains and then popped the flashlight out of Sam's hands. That was rude. Sam bit back a comment since this wasn't the time and followed his brother down a steep flight of stone stairs. This place wasn't used regularly, judging from the layers of cobwebs strung along the ceiling.

At the landing was practically an acre of storage. Long tables were stacked with boxes, and more boxes were under the tables. Filing cabinets lined up along one wall and opaque plastic tarps covered old computers. Dean ran the beam carefully over everything. Then he found the light switch and flipped it on.

"Not promising," Sam said in the dim yellow glow.

"I'll take this end, you take that end," Dean said.

"What am I looking for?"

"I don't know! Anything!"

Anything. That was a pretty broad category. Having the flashlight snatched away put Sam in an antagonistic mood. He swallowed it down and went as bidden to the far side of the basement. Boxes and more boxes . . . popping off a lid at random, he inspected the contents. Books. Nothing spooky, just old educational codes atop financial files. He put the lid back on and opened a second. It looked like retired sports equipment. This basement was just a catchall for the effluvia of the school above.

Although packed, the room had been kept fairly tidy over the years. The dust was thick, but narrow paths wound through the mountain ranges of tables stacked unevenly with boxes. Sam walked along, peeking into boxes to find ancient yearbooks and yellowing receipts. A broken copier had been moved down here as well. He passed it and pushed into the last aisle.

Boxes. That was all. They ran up almost to the ceiling. It was time to get back to his dorm room, pretend he had had an upset stomach if Kappie woke up and asked where he'd been. Sam started to turn away, and then a small oddity caught his eye. Some of the boxes were stacked within the aisle itself at the far end, even though there was space under a table to contain them. He walked over and lifted the lid of a shoebox on the top. It was just more receipts. Wondering why the boxes were there, Sam crouched down and looked under the table.

It looked like there was a door to a crawlspace. Rather than call over his brother, who he was still mad at for being a jerk, Sam slipped under the table and pushed cautiously at the door. Cracked open slightly, it gave. Within was a strange light, which flickered over the stone floor like the changing images of a screen at the theater.

"Sam?" Dean called.

Without giving him the courtesy of a reply, Sam crawled inside.


	15. Chapter 15

**Chapter Fifteen**

Hunters saw weird stuff. That was part of the job. Gross stuff aplenty, sad and scary stuff almost always, and weird stuff sneaked in there, too. Just when you thought you'd seen it all, vampires and werewolves and fifty shades of ghosts, something new came down the pike.

This was weird stuff.

The periphery of the room was laden in old couches and armchairs, with end tables wedged between them. Some held up old-fashioned lamps and soda cans were clustered on others. Dean couldn't figure out how the furniture had gotten into this room through a crawlspace, since that was the only opening. The likely explanation was that there used to be a door that got filled in.

But that was hardly the weirdest feature. That honor was awarded to the object in the center of the room. A blood red outline of a circle was painted on the floor. About seven feet in diameter, it was elegantly scrolled. The scrolling was interrupted at only one point of the circle, where it was replaced by a solid red dot just large enough for someone to stand upon.

It was impenetrable. Dean figured that out the third time he picked himself up off the floor after touching the invisible barrier. Having tested it himself, Sam did it the smarter way with a rod from the corner. The rod was blasted to the wall, rocking him back with the force of the blow but not tumbling him down.

Inside the barrier was a doorway, and that was creating the light in the room. The light twisted and turned within it, darkness roiling over the surface to make it flicker. Dean brushed off his pants and said, "What the _hell _is that?"

Utterly befuddled, Sam said, "I have no idea."

The light did not react to their presence, not even when the invisible barrier was tossing Dean around like a handful of spare change. It just twisted and knotted, darkened and lightened, straightened and crumpled in the doorway. Since it wasn't doing anything, the boys searched every inch of the room for more information. Under the cushions of the sofas and armchairs were pennies and candy wrappers. Dean got down on his hands and knees to shine the light underneath and saw more of the same. "You finding anything, Sammy?"

"An old picture," Sam said. Dean looked up to see his brother sitting in an armchair with a framed picture in his hands. He got back to his feet and tried to pluck it away for a look, but Sam held onto it tightly and said, "Don't be a dick."

Dean blinked in surprise and sat on the end of the sofa closest to the armchair. Sam had a flea up his nose about something. They looked at the picture together. It was really old, of seven Penworth boys long ago. Only one smiled; the other six just looked pensively out to the camera. Sam tapped his finger to the glass over the smiling boy. "That's Lucy's great-great-grandfather. Charles Warwick."

Everyone else looked as serious as if they were going to a funeral, and Charles was beaming like he was on his way to a carnival. Dean said, "Sam, can I look at it?"

"Okay," Sam said amiably. Dean popped off the back and removed the picture carefully. On the back was spidery handwriting. _Kronoan Club, 1895. _Sam read it over his shoulder. "That's not a club in the handbook."

"Is this the Devil's Club, the one that the teacher was investigating?" Dean wondered. "But she didn't teach here until the nineteen twenties. These kids weren't here any longer."

"Their kids were here by that time," Sam said. "The second generation of these families. What does Kronoan mean?"

"I don't know," Dean said. "Bobby might, but he won't talk to me."

"I can call him."

"Why would he talk to you?"

"I can try." Sam moved the light carefully over the other faces in the shot. "I know some of these guys from another picture I saw of their class. That's Henry Percival in the front, and Albert Dillinger in the back. I'd have to look up the rest."

"Henry Percival," Dean repeated. "He was supposed to be a real nice guy, not someone in a Devil's Club."

"Appearances can be deceiving," Sam said. "You told me the teacher was investigating when she was murdered. Maybe she was murdered because she _was_ investigating. But that was the only not-weird death. Whatever goes on here doesn't affect teachers or other staff. Just students."

"So maybe that was why her death _wasn't _weird," Dean said. "If this is some kind of . . . spell or demon or whatever, it doesn't work its mojo on adults. Someone would have to kill her a regular way. There must have been plenty of awful teachers here in over a hundred years, but has anything ever happened to them?"

"Supernatural? Not that I've seen, not ever," Sam replied. "Should we take this with us?"

"Where was it? On display somewhere? Will someone notice it's gone?"

"It was covered in dust and shoved under an end table."

That made the decision easy. "Then we'll take it so we can research this Kronoan."

Dean slid the frame under an end table and Sam slipped the picture down his shirt. Crawling out to the basement, they got back outside. They left the chains where they were but returned the clippers to the gardener's shed. Dean wasn't too worried about the clipped chains in the grass. That would be attributed to someone breaking in to steal from the basement.

It worried him more to think of Braden, how that shining star of the track ran straight into the sun and vanished. The theater girl with the mushrooms in her throat, the guy with the kicked head from a coveted horse, the fiery death in the library . . . he looked at his little brother's keen eyes and said, "Don't stand out."

"What?"

"You're smart, Sam. Real smart. Downplay it a little. We don't know how long we'll be at this school, and you don't want to-"

"I know how to take care of myself," Sam said in irritation. They let themselves into the dorm and he walked away stiffly to his room while Dean took the stairs.

_Kronoan_. If Bobby didn't tell Sam anything, then Dean was going to risk calling Dad. He'd keep calm if Dad blew up, because Dean's blowing up about Penworth made Dad blow up more until they were in a feedback loop of blow ups that hadn't gotten Dean anywhere. Calm. Rational. Polite.

And firm. If there was an answer, Dean was going to get it. One way or another.


	16. Chapter 16

**Chapter** **Sixteen **

He was in his room, waiting for Bobby to call back about Kronoan. That part had been easy. Bobby didn't want to talk to Dean because Dean called with an attitude; Sam started off the conversation with how much he liked the school, except that a few of the students were weird in a very troublesome way and Sam wanted advice on how to handle it. Maybe Bobby was just in a better space for a talk when Sam happened to call, but he wanted to know more.

The flickering doorway behind the invisible barrier piqued Bobby's interest tremendously, and he'd gone off to research after bellowing at Sam to leave it alone. Sam agreed to leave it alone. It wasn't like he could get any closer anyway.

While Bobby looked up Kronoan, Sam was researching the picture. The seven boys in the picture were easy to identify. Arrogant Charles Warwick of course, Henry Percival and Albert Dillinger, and the four others were Joseph Baron, Lewis Irving, Claude Herman, and Otto Patricks. Their descendants proliferated at the school, save the Hermans and the Patricks who had died out.

These boys graduated before the turn of the century, and then sent their sons to the school. Sam had sneaked archived materials from the library, which he was paging through. Nothing weird of note happened after these boys graduated, not until their sons started to arrive at Penworth. That was curious. Then the sons graduated or were expelled, the very last one leaving the school in the early thirties. Nothing weird happened until 1940, yet there were still some Warwicks, Irvings, and Dillingers passing through at that time. They were second cousins and the great-nephews of the ones in the picture. So that wasn't a connection.

Reading the name Warwick made him think of Lucy. She had sneaked into the boys' dorm to write HI SAM and draw flowers all around his name on the whiteboard. He couldn't bring himself to erase it, even if it took up his entire half and guys were catcalling. Kappie had buried his head in his hands to see it and cried out that she was going to eat Sam for lunch the second he pissed her off.

No, that was her sister Hilary. That might be everyone else in the Warwick family, but it wasn't Lucy. Sam looked down to his notes about their family going back generations. Were they really all like that? Every single one?

The phone rang and he grabbed it up. "Bobby?"

"This is no good, Sam, not if it's what I think it is."

"What do you think it is?"

"A bleeding, stinking, dirty little vengeance demon some witches in that school might be summoning," Bobby replied, a book closing with a thump on his end. "This is a rat of Hell, Sam, do you get me?"

"Not really."

"Demons, they possess different levels and different kinds of magic. You know that. You got the big fat powerful turkeys that everyone wants to do business with, like the crossroads demons. They wield an incredibly powerful spell. Ten years of riches, looks, fame, whatever you want until a hellhound comes looking for something to gnaw on. Then you got the decent chickens aplenty, the ones people call up for smaller-size deals. They don't have as much meat as the turkeys. Just not as powerful. Trade your firstborn for a perfect wedding? That's their level."

"People will do that?" Sam asked, aghast at calling up a demon for such a stupid reason.

"People will do anything, kid. So you got the turkeys, you got the chickens, and then, Sam, _then_ you got the rats. They only got one or two tricks, and those one or two tricks aren't real impressive. Magic ain't their strong suit. People don't bother summoning up demons like that, 'cause they don't got much to offer. Like a demon who can do a verigo spell. Heard of that?"

Sam shook his head and realized that Bobby couldn't see it. "No."

"And you won't. The slice of magic they got, what good is it? The big old birds, some of them have the power to manipulate your own personal biology, make you hemorrhage to death internally, or bleed from your mouth, your ears, pick the orifice. You'll bleed and bleed until you don't have a drop of blood left. A verigo? That's like the remedial version. They can give you a nosebleed, and not one that's going to kill you. If you're so mad at someone that you're thinking of calling up a _demon_ to get back at him, then you aren't thinking of giving him a nosebleed. And these demons can't just pass out nosebleeds like candy; they aren't that skilled. The magic is over their head. It takes them a while to recharge after they've given out a nosebleed, and they can't work for the same customer twice. The spell doesn't work the second time. So no one _bothers_ with demons like that, Sam! What human is going to collect a bunch of ingredients and do a long incantation to call up a demon and all to give an enemy one lousy nosebleed? These demons got the short stick on power, strength, everything. Either they don't put in the work to gain better magic, or they're just too dumb to progress any further. So all they have are these warped little spells. A rat."

"Are you saying a Kronoan is a short stick demon?"

"And let's consider Kronoan!" Bobby cried. Another book thumped, although if it was being opened or closed, Sam couldn't discern. "Now this is a pretty big rat, but it's still a rat. It's not a one-shot like a verigo, a human can keep using it for vengeance, yet there's a time limit running from the first summon of about five years. So if I were to summon one tonight to get back at the pizza guy for forgetting my breadsticks, my timer would start ticking. Ten years from now if I wanted to use it again, ding ding, too bad! It's over. I can't ever use that same demon or one like it."

"If a student of fourteen or so summons it-"

"Well, then it's gone in your late teens. Ding ding."

Thinking of the boy on fire in the library, Sam said, "It still seems like pretty powerful magic-"

"But Sam, this is what I mean about a rat. The spell is warped, and a warped spell is a limited spell. Now a crossroads demon can go anywhere there's a crossroads. A demon with Kronoan? When you summon it up, you inadvertently tie it to that location."

"The girl with the mushrooms in her throat-"

"Exactly! She moved outside of the range of the demon, and the mushrooms started dying. I bet those former students who went crazy were put in institutions, where the crazy started to fade and they were just fine. If one of your little schoolmates wanted to exact vengeance on someone he met over summer break in France, or a girl who broke his heart back home in California in junior high, too bad! He can't. It's an extremely localized range, dependent on where it was summoned. And that would be a basement in your ruddy school."

"So-"

Bobby rode over him. "And it gets more useless_ still_. A demon with this skill is also limited by the type of victim you first feed it. I feed one my pizza guy, and it's going to keep wanting pizza guys. Not exactly like that, but you get it. So if the first victim here was a student, it's going to keep on wanting students, not a slab of old man meat like me." Pages rustled. "It's like the verigo in that it takes a while to recharge between uses. You can't use a Kronoan willy-nilly everyday on everyone you don't like. They got scary power indeed, but they still don't have that much compared to the turkeys and chickens. So some stupid kid put his blood in a Kronoan goblet to summon it up, give it a doorway to pass through to Penworth. I don't know what this line means under how to kill these demons, _first blood last blood_ and this incantation here. You still there? Did I lose you?"

Sam didn't mention that Bobby had been interrupting him. "I'm here. But Bobby, those kids graduated long ago and these attacks still happen. So they taught all of the kids in their families to-"

"Useless," Bobby muttered. Sam bristled, thinking that Bobby was talking about him, but another page rustled. "I'll have to translate this gobbledy-gook scribbled here, something about blood of the master. The master of the demon . . . that would be the boy to summon it. The Kronoan is bound to that blood, or later direct-line carriers of it . . . dammit, I got five of these phones blinking. Keep your nose clean and I'll get back to you."

Sam hung up the phone and paused, thinking of Braden who ran into the sun. If the third place guy who got the bug up his nose hadn't insisted on running the heat against the default winner . . .

"Hey," Sam said as Kappie came into the room. "Who was that guy at the races, the junior who had the fit about the bug up his nose? Then he won."

"Travis Lane."

Oh. Well, that wasn't one of the powerhouse names here at Penworth.

"His mom is a Dillinger," Kappie added indifferently, dropping his backpack as his watch beeped. "Fifth Gen."


	17. Chapter 17

**Chapter Seventeen**

"Did you like the makeover I gave your room, Free Ride?" Shawn said in history when the teacher stepped out to make copies. Then he laughed and turned around, giving Adam a high five.

Dean didn't know what kind of ugly this kid was messing with, or if he was even involved, but he was long past the point of caring. This morning at breakfast, Shawn had dumped a roll of pennies over Dean's head to give him some spending money. And then he'd shoved Sam hard in the hallway as everyone walked out of the cafeteria to first period. The only reason Dean hadn't launched for him was because Sam caught his arm in a surprisingly strong grip and shook his head. As Kappie helped to pick up the books, Dean did the same with the notes scattered everywhere. He felt like a chump for not going after Shawn anyway. The only one to say anything was Sam's little girlfriend Lucy, who stooped to pick up papers and shouted, "You're an asshole, Shawn!"

He turned, ready to pop whoever dared to call him that, but paused with uncertainty to see the source. Kids scurried away from a potential conflict asLucy grabbed up more papers. Dean thought her eyes were trippy, one light and one dark. Both were filled with fury as she castigated, "You think you're such hot shit, Shawn, but you're just shit. Shit for brains and shit for looks and shit for personality, your family's company is scoring shit for stocks so you'd better make a lot of money after college or you're going to land shit for girls, too!"

He flushed as some kids laughed while hurrying off. One called, "Tommy! Hey, did you hear what she _said_?" The wheels turned slowly in Shawn's brain that popping Lucy might not be such a good idea, and then he laughed like he didn't care and ambled off. It was Hilary who walked past and slapped her sister on the back of the head without a break in stride. Her eyes filling with tears, Lucy ran out of the building and back in the direction of Beechman without even returning the pages to Sam.

So now Dean was in history class. What Lucy said had spread like wildfire throughout the entire student body, and Shawn was in a pissy mood. Throwing things, hissing insults, and Dean was coming to the end of his rope. The sight of his brother hitting the lockers, the load in his arms spraying out as he winced with pain, that had bugged Dean for hours since he hadn't done anything about it. Adam was egging Shawn on, keeping it going minute after painful minute of this class.

Dean couldn't hear exactly what the guy was saying, but Shawn turned moments later and said, "You know? I got a problem with you, Free Ride."

"Aw, what's twisting your panties, Percival?" Dean asked.

His nostrils flared. There was a big old zit right between them. "Your face. Your face is the problem. What do you think we can do about that?"

"I don't know, Shawn. I think I'm kind of pretty," Dean said.

"I think Shawn should rearrange it," Adam suggested. "A free facelift, isn't that right, Shawn? It's all he can afford."

"Oh, maybe not," Dean said, and he was aching for this fight. "Seems like Shawn's family should be pinching their pennies now, from what I hear. Falling stocks."

Shawn had just enough brain cells not to launch over the desk at Dean. "After school!"

"Sure, princess," Dean said, his tone nonchalant because that was how he felt. He'd handled so much worse than this spoiled brat. "Name the place."

"Behind the bleachers, three-fifteen," Adam said, and the teacher returned.

When the bell rang, the guy who sat behind Dean whispered, "Man, don't do it. Don't take him on."

"I'm not scared of the shitty rich kids at this school," Dean said while packing up his backpack. Adam and Shawn were already gone.

The guy stood up. "You're just as shitty as you think we are if you think we're all like that."

"Look, do I know you or something?" Dean asked, not knowing why this guy was talking to him.

"I live two doors down from you, Dean," the guy said, and walked out to leave him feeling like an asshole for not even knowing the guy's name. When he went upstairs to have his solitary lunch, he checked the white board on the second door down from his. Pete.

As he stepped into his room, Sam flew into the hallway and charged in after him. Huffing and puffing like he'd run the whole way over, Sam said,"You can't fight him!"

"Yes, I can," said Dean.

"No, you can't! Dean, you know as well as I do that there is something bad going on at this school! How do you know that he's not-"

"What, whipping up his little vengeance demon to teach me a lesson?" Dean scoffed. "This is just a fistfight. Besides, doesn't this Kronoan take a while to recharge? If they just set it on Braden and turned him to ashes, then I don't have anything to worry about!"

"But when it _does_ recharge, they can set it on you!"

"I'm not backing out of this fight."

"Then _lose_. If you lose, if he feels like he saved face in front of everyone, he won't have any reason to-"

Dean couldn't believe what he was hearing. He wasn't going to throw the fight, let that asshole walk away smiling. "Sam, let me handle this. I know what I'm doing."

"You don't," Sam said bleakly.

A quarter after three found Dean behind the bleachers. Not late, not early, but right on time. Shawn came late, striding in with a coterie of his friends. But Dean had friends too, or at least he had his brother there. Sauntering over, Shawn said, "Aw, eager to get this over with? Look, boys, he thinks the early bird gets the worm." His five friends laughed.

"That's Corey Irving," Sam whispered about one of the boys. "Fifth Gen."

Dean didn't care who the other students were. He stepped away from the poles of the bleachers. Shawn took off his blazer and threw it to Adam, who shouted, "Fix his face!"

With the first three punches to fly in his direction, Dean knew exactly what kind of fighter Shawn was. The stupid kind who threw his whole body off-balance every time he drove out, making his fist the center of gravity instead of his core. That was fine if his fist collided with something, vibrating that center back to him and fixing his balance, but every time he missed, he staggered a little forward to keep from falling. Dean avoided the fourth blow and then swung out fast and hard for his nose and stomach. Shawn doubled over and Dean drove his elbow down into that sweet spot just below the shoulder blade. That sent Shawn to the grass with a howl.

Spongy. Spongy and untrained and weak, that was this pathetic sack of entitled shit. "What's the matter, Shawnie? Need some help getting up?"

Looking to his friends, Shawn yelled, "Get him!"

Then they were on him, all five at once. Sam shouted in surprise from the poles. "That's _cheating_!" Running over, he launched himself at Corey Irving. The two of them went down in a tussle of fists. Dean kicked and punched for all he was worth, but four on one brought him to the grass.

Then Shawn was standing over him, and brought his shoe down on Dean's neck. Blood leaked from Shawn's lip. "Something you want to say to me, boy?" He pressed down harder when Dean tried to answer. "You hear me? Got something to say?"

How could Dean say anything with a shoe on his neck? He couldn't breathe. Thrashing about, he turned his head to the side and dragged in some air. Then a shout of warning rang out. "The coach! The coach is coming!"

They scattered, Dean hauling Sam off a howling Corey and the boys bolting away. He didn't know where he was going until he was in the cemetery. Ducking behind the trees, he and Sam gasped for air. Blood was damp on Dean's brow. Checking over his brother, all he found was mussed hair and a scratch on his cheek. "Why are you fine? What were you and Corey doing, giving each back slaps and hugs?"

"I kicked him in the nuts," Sam said. "And then I kicked him there again."

Dean grimaced. "Sam!"

"They cheated. So I cheated," Sam said grimly. "And you're stupid."

Sitting back against the tree, Dean looked out to the tombstones, then back to Sam. Something about the absolutely black look plastered to his serious little brother's face made him laugh. "I like your girlfriend. She's real pretty." He liked her even if she had made this mess with her temper. But she did it for Sam, and that was more than Dean had done in the hallway.

"She's not my girlfriend." Sam's face was turning red. "She's just my friend."

"I like her anyway, your friend who is a girl," Dean said. He knew why Lucy unloaded so wildly on Shawn, and it hadn't been in defense of a friend.

"I like her, too," Sam said after a lengthy pause. Then a pebble flew through the air and pegged Dean on the shoulder. "Hands off."


	18. Chapter 18

**Chapter Eighteen**

Sam didn't know where they would have gotten the demon's summoning goblet, the boys who started the Kronoan Club. That didn't matter so much, yet he was still curious. Back then, some of the Percival family fortune was in curio shops scattered all over the state. Had this goblet been mixed in with the bric-a-brac? It seemed a likely possibility. Sitting on the shelf of a shop, for the curious Percival son to pluck up. Or perhaps the boy of the Baron family came across it somewhere, as they and their relatives were very well traveled. It could have simply been unearthed in a chest tucked in the attic of a home belonging to any of the boys, but how had they figured out what it _was_? A Kronoan was such a non-entity in Hell's roster that even Bobby with all of his years of experience had to look it up. Sam wouldn't recognize a Kronoan goblet if one fell in his lap and introduced itself.

But the boys had gotten it, and more importantly, decided to activate it. And then passed it on through the generations! Sam couldn't imagine his father telling him exactly how to visit a demon upon students that he didn't like. Dad would have had solutions for how to deal with trouble, and not one would include the supernatural.

Sam was supposed to be studying at the library, but he was thinking about this case in his room. No one had gotten in trouble for yesterday's fight behind the bleachers, since no one copped to a fight having happened. Dean had some bruises on his face and said when asked by staff that he'd walked into a door. Shawn said more or less the same, and Corey was throwing hateful looks across the hallways when he spotted Sam. Sam didn't feel bad. The fight was a one-on-one challenge, not a pile-on. He was used to demons playing dirty, since that was how they played. They _were_ dirty. But he'd stupidly assumed that humans would abide by the rules of combat.

Some humans could be as bad as demons. The first boys to summon the Kronoan did it in revenge on the bully of their class, August Hilman who was allowed to do whatever he wanted because his family donated to the school. And then there was the lackey friend who went mad and got carted away. This demon didn't kill every time. It maimed, it sickened, either not strong enough to kill with each recharge, or maybe just not wanting to kill. Or perhaps it wasn't in total control of the spell, being rat level. And it didn't matter so much in the end if it killed or maimed, since it was always effective in moving the victim out of the school one way or another.

Sam wouldn't summon a demon to get rid of a bully, but he understood what motivated the boys who initially did it. Magic often seemed exciting and fun to newcomers, and the Kronoan offered a way out of a painful situation. Looking at the later lives of the seven, Sam saw over and over how they weren't bad men. Some were more dickish than others, but none grew into a murderer or anything like that. They had had a serious problem at Penworth, and found a way to deal with it.

But the victims later on, in the twenties and beyond, those were frivolous targets. Like the boy who was kicked in the head by a horse. Sam had researched that case like a madman for every scrap. Every account said that that kid was a nice, soft-spoken dude. The boy was too damn smart and experienced to have made that mistake. Furthermore, the _horse_ was too damn smart and experienced to have made that mistake! He had always been very gentle with beginners and never shown the slightest bit of aggression. The boy went into the ground, the horse was adopted by a Dillinger.

The same shenanigans went on with a boy set to earn valedictorian decades ago. In his senior year, he was found wandering around naked outside without a single memory of who he was or what he was doing there. He'd been taken to a hospital, where his mind slowly came back together, and then fell apart again at his return to Penworth. The doctors chalked it up to stress amnesia. And who was due for salutatorian, and got valedictorian by default? It just so happened to be a Percival.

The boy who caught fire in the library had just beaten an Irving for a place on the decathlon team. People described him as an academic blaze, and he literally _became_ a blaze. On it went through Sam's notes, the same names turning up over and over and over again. Warwick. Percival. Dillinger. Irving. Baron. These were humans as bad as the demon they set on their victims.

Someone knocked. He called to come in, figuring it was Dean. The door opened and his eyes widened to see Lucy. Kappie wasn't here, thank God, off at a visit to the optometrist. Sam ran his hand through his hair and wished that he had thought to do that the second he heard the knock.

"Hi," he said a little nervously.

Her face was very serious. "I want to know who you are."

"What do you mean?

She handed him a stack of notes that must have fallen out of his arms when Shawn shoved him in the hallway. He had so many that he hadn't even realized they were missing. On top of the notes was the picture they had taken from the basement. "Lucy-"

"No, Sam. Right now you're trying to think up some bullshit story fast, about liking history or that it's not yours. I can see it all over your face. But this is your handwriting and all of this came out of your hands. Even _my_ name is on this list you made of Warwicks, and I want to know why it's there. So you're going to tell me the truth. This stuff . . ." she indicated the papers, " . . . this stuff is all craziness. So what is it?"

He looked out the window, his mind still chewing on stories that she wouldn't believe. "You'll think I'm crazy."

"I know you're not crazy."

Looking back, he ached to see those mismatched eyes filled with distrust. "Then tell me first: what did you see when Braden was running that afternoon?"

"What does that have to do with this?"

"Trust me that it does. What did you see? Everyone says he ran away, but what do _you_ say?"

Blood drained from her face. "He . . . he ran. He ran off the athletic field. School was getting to him. He ran away."

"Lucy."

Closing her eyes briefly, she whispered, "The sun was in my face, so it was hard to see anything. I thought for a second . . . it was like he ran right into the sun, and it burned him to ash. I figured I saw it wrong. Like when you see things out of the corner of your eye, but you turn and nothing's there. It was like that. Sam . . ."

He chose his words carefully. "Strange things happen at this school to students who get in the way."

"Get in the way of what?"

"Of certain families. Maybe it started as revenge long ago, for class bullies out of control. But later on . . . now one of them just wants to be top of the class. Or score the last open place on a sports team."

She grew even paler. "Or win the lead in a school play?"

He didn't know what to say to that. Walking over to the desk, she set down the papers from the hallway. His other notes were there, page after page of them. She rifled through and then turned to examine him. "Tell me who you really are."

"I'm a hunter's son. Not hunting deer or anything like that. My father hunts . . . the strange. What looks inexplicable to you."

"Ghosts."

"Sometimes. Sometimes other things."

She tapped her finger on the page showing. WARWICK was there in thick black ink. "Sam?"

"Yeah?" He thought that Lucy was going to run screaming from his room to the principal's office, call him a stalker or some weirdo freak and get him expelled. Dad was going to kill him. Then resurrect him, and kill him a second time.

Instead, she said, "Talk to me."

Author's Note: I just wanted to say thank you for your reviews! I'm having so much fun with this and they make my day. (Not making my day are my backyard chickens, who are all named after Harry Potter spells and are currently screeching at the top of their lungs since Expecto Patronum wants to lay an egg and Avada Kedavra is daring to lay one _at the same time_ in the favorite nest box. Avada yells back at her to go away and Imperio just yells since everyone else is yelling and it looks like fun. I explained to them that I require absolute quiet in which to write, and they remain unimpressed. If this year's batch of novels comes out terribly, I BLAME _YOU_, CHICKENS.)


	19. Chapter 19

**Chapter Nineteen**

"Direct lineage," Sam muttered over the family trees as Dean hung up his phone. Sam was at Dean's desk, crossing out names that were not directly descended from the seven.

Dean's ear was ringing. Bobby had yelled at Dean for letting Sam get involved in this, and for not letting Bobby know that something weird was going on at this school. Why had Bobby learned all about this from Sam? Dean argued that he_ had_ told Bobby about the boy who went poof, and Bobby hadn't been interested. Bobby yelled that he couldn't take anything Dean said seriously when his mailbox was full of demerit slips and croquet balls. Then he yelled that he was sorry, and that he should have listened to Dean. That made Dean feel better, even if he had to hold the phone a few inches from his ear. Bobby had been on a rip.

The pen scratched over the pages, eliminating nephews and great-nephews and great-great-nieces and cousins alike. It was nervous work, and unnecessary. As he crossed them out, Sam said, "So you have the original seven in the late 1800s. Some had children all within a few years of age; others were having their youngest kids fifteen years after the oldest ones. Approximately twenty years after the seven graduated, the oldest of all of these sons began coming here."

"And it starts up again, like a second club," Dean said.

"Exactly, the second Kronoan club, made up of the sons of the seven, spread out over a decade from oldest to youngest." Sam tapped on names left uncrossed. "When you consider how much chaos they _could_ have caused, and how much was actually caused, it makes me think not all of the sons were involved. Like some weren't interested. You have years where a bunch of things happen and then those sons graduate and nothing happens for a year or two. Take this particular son of Charles Warwick. Nothing everhappened to the students in his year, and he was a really competitive dude. But when he got second in sports or academics, he took it. Nothing happened to the first place. He swallowed his lumps and moved on."

"So maybe he wasn't as big of a douche," Dean said, noting on the quick biography of that fellow that he was a hall monitor. That seemed fairly douchey to him, but a rule-following douchey. After graduating, he worked in charities and philanthropy for the rest of his life. "Or maybe he never knew what was going on, the others didn't tell him for some reason. Maybe they thought he was the kind to snitch."

Sam nodded and then shook his head. "We don't know, but it's reasonable. The teacher finds out what's going on and threatens to expose them. They can't use the demon on her. It wants students for victims. So one of them murders her. I don't think we'll ever know which one it was. There were several capable of doing that. They could have even hired it out; these were rich kids. So the last of the sons left the school in the early 1930s, thus concluding the second Kronoan club. And then we have a gap of nothing at all going on, which lasts until the grandsons arrive. The oldest of the grandsons and the youngest of the grandsons, that's a wide gap. So the rash of attacks caused by the third club is even longer than the second club. It just goes and goes and goes until the late 1950s."

"I'm catching on," Dean said. He turned a page and skimmed down his brother's precise handwriting. "The fourth Kronoan comes in practically on the heels of the third, and now it includes the great-granddaughters of the original seven in addition to the great-grandsons. So then we come to the fifth."

"What did Bobby tell you?"

"Couldn't you hear?" Dean was pretty sure the whole dorm could have heard. "He's fighting to translate the little bit of notes he has. You can fill a library with facts on vampires, he says, but not a thimble with facts on Kronoan."

Sam returned to crossing off names. "I heard him yelling about ego boosts."

"He was wondering what the Kronoan gets out of this. You don't make a deal with a Kronoan like a crossroads demon. From what he knows about rats, some of them are so excited to be summoned with their piddly little warped spells that they just like to show them off. Look at me! Look at what I can do! They get the ego boost from humans that they aren't getting elsewhere. Demons don't exactly fall over in amazement at a Kronoan."

The pen paused. Sam blurted, "Dad called me this morning. I didn't tell him."

Dean was exasperated that Sam had told Lucy. "How is his hunt going? Did he say?"

"He said that they're closing in. They've got a solid lead on a location. Did Bobby tell you how to kill it? That's the information we need now."

He had, but it hadn't made much sense. The notes were written so obliquely that it was just Bobby's best guess. Dean rubbed his ear and said, "First blood, last blood. The blood to hit the goblet opened the portal for this demon to come through. To close it, the notes say that we need a drop of blood from the same person, and to say the incantation backwards."

"But which one of the seven gave the blood?" Sam asked in frustration. "They all had motive, and I can't figure out which one was the owner of the goblet. And just because he owned it doesn't necessarily indicate that he was the one to drop the blood. That Percival acted guilty-"

"The bigger issue is will they have blood _left_," Dean said. "These guys were born in the 1880s; they died from the 1940s to the 1960s. We've got to dig them up and see what we can siphon from their veins." That news had frustrated him, too. If there was nothing left of these old dudes, did the demon just stick around Penworth forever? How did you stop a demon if the only weapon against it no longer existed? Or it could be that Bobby was reading the notes wrong, which he admitted was a strong possibility. Dean preferred vampire cases, which were so cut and dry compared to this.

"You've got a shovel already," Sam said, his eyes to the closet.

"Yeah," Dean said. He had spotted it in the school dumpster, a perfectly good shovel thrown out only because the rubber handle grip was torn. A grip cost one ninety-nine, for God's sake. He'd whisked the shovel from the dumpster and up to his room. "So let's get a phone book and find the local cemeteries. Tonight we're going digging."

Author's Note: The best gift a writer can give his/her work is to edit it. Yesterday I read the first chapter of a published novel in which lack of editing led to a true gem. What should have read: _It was as tangled as a ball of yarn_ said instead _It was as tangled as a barn of yearn_. Mistakes will elude even the most careful of writers, but that was a real doozy.

Also, never raise chicks with a mockingbird in the yard. The mockingbird will sit in the tree singing chicken alarms for fun. It has been doing this for two years now.


	20. Chapter 20

**Chapter Twenty **

It hadn't been a good night.

Two of the seven had been cremated. The burial site of one could not even be located; the burial site of another was located but in Florida. So that left three local graves in Percival, Dillinger, and Warwick, and the slim hope that their blood hadn't been replaced with embalming fluid, or that the blood hadn't evaporated if not. Sam thought while digging that their chances of finding blood were pretty slim. These had been pillars of the community, big men in their time, and they could afford embalming. Maybe they'd donated blood at some point for medical purposes, but how Sam and Dean were supposed to locate that, he had no idea.

Every demon had a weak spot: a blade that killed them; a spell that stripped them of power; a key or solution or plant or silver bullet, _something_. Nothing and no one was invincible. Even the biggest, baddest, and scariest had an Achilles heel. So why was it that a rat of Hell had the tiniest Achilles heel ever?

The first dude they dug up had had a bad mortician. Henry Percival was shriveled up to nothing like he'd been dead for over a hundred years. Dean looked down at the shriveled brown husk in a suit and said, "Strike one."

Sam wiped sweat from his forehead and sat on the side of the hole with his legs dangling toward the casket. "We'll have to tell Bobby if this doesn't go our way. He can send a hunter to Florida to check out that grave."

Closing the lid, Dean hefted himself out of the pit and said, "How is it that this stupid little numbnuts demon can be so impossible to kill?"

"I was just thinking the same thing," Sam said. "It must be an effect of the warped nature of the spell itself."

"I mean, first blood to open it is the last blood to close it, but what if this had kept going for five hundred years?" Dean mused. "A _thousand_ years? Of course you can't get that first blood. It doesn't exist any longer. It might not exist even now. So it makes this magically special needs offshoot of Hell virtually indestructible. Well? You planning on helping me to fill this in?"

"You want to sit a minute?" Sam asked. Dean was red-faced from exertion and his shirt was soaking wet.

"No. Come on, let's get this done. It's a long walk to the other cemetery where Warwick and Dillinger are."

Sam was worried about how it looked to walk around with a shovel through a nice town. At least they weren't wearing their Penworth uniforms. Once the hole was filled in, they passed from one quiet street to another with their only audience being cats and dogs. Once a police car turned down the far end of the road they were on, and they crouched behind a dumpster until it passed.

"I got a paper due tomorrow," Dean mumbled.

"What's it on?" Sam asked.

"Something stupid for history. You feel like writing a paper tonight?"

"I've got a test tomorrow in math."

"And you don't hate that?" Dean asked as they resumed their walk.

Why would Sam hate that he had a test? He was a little nervous since the class was hard and he hadn't gotten in as much study time as he wanted, but he didn't see the point in hating an exam. "No. It's just a test."

"Out here, this is real," said Dean. "Real work. Not silly, waste-time stuff like tests and papers."

"It's not waste-time stuff what we're learning. Some of the kids in our classes will be doctors one day. Surgeons. Lawyers. Inventors. Professors. But you can't do those things unless you've started with the basics-" Sam argued.

"It's waste-time stuff for me," Dean said. It wasn't waste-time stuff to Sam.

The second cemetery was massive, and the other guys were hard to find. They came across the Dillinger first and traded off digging him out. He had been better embalmed, but the problem was that he'd _been_ embalmed. They couldn't get much fluid out of him, and what came out wasn't blood. Sam snapped the ampoule of murky liquid into a protective case. Dean didn't take a minute to sit or even to breathe. Once the lid was closed, he was out of the hole and filling it in.

They found Charles Warwick on the other end of the cemetery beside a big white column. Dean said, "I can't believe we're digging up your little girlfriend's great-great-grandfather. And Hilary's. You sure that Lucy wasn't adopted?"

"She wasn't." Sam had seen a picture of the Warwick family, which Lucy showed him at dinner one day. Lucy had her father's mouth and nose, and her mother's hair. They had been at a resort in Hawaii, and her parents argued so loudly that someone in another room called the front desk to complain. "She just doesn't want to be like her family. They fight all the time, like they take the first syllable of their surname seriously. But she's . . . she's a peaceful spirit."

They dug. Sam was exhausted after a full day of school to come out here and spend the night digging up graves. He thought of his bed with affection, and hoped Kappie just kept on sleeping unaware that the lump under Sam's blanket was a pillow. It took far too long to get through the packed earth, and he didn't think they were ever going to reach the grave when finally the shovel struck it.

"Mr. Money Bags," Dean said once it was cleared off. The lid was elaborately carved, with a giant W at the center. "Who pays so much money for a coffin that no one is ever going to see?" It was quite incredible. Above the W was a sun, and birds flew through the rays. Below the W was a lush garden.

They cracked it open. Another shriveled up husk was inside, the suit sinking into the cavity of his abdomen. Nothing came out when Dean poked and prodded at it with a needle and syringe. Sam said, "What should we do?"

"I'm going to take his damn finger," Dean said in annoyance. Sam grimaced while the finger was clipped off and he dutifully added the ampoule with it to the case. Maybe they could extract a drop somehow.

Once the lid banged shut, Dean finally took a seat. Sam moved his light over the W, wondering what this coffin had cost. It was probably a drop in the bucket to the Warwicks. Everyone went to Ivy League; everyone got a job in banking or investing; everyone brought home the big bucks to their mansions and then fought over Christmas decorations.

"Dean?" Sam asked, shining the light at a tiny detail atop an ornamental post in the garden scene. "Does that look like a goblet to you?"

Dean squinted and then got down for a better look. When he tried to snap the light from Sam's hand, Sam jerked it away in reflex. "Dude, would you stop grabbing things from my hands? You're not four."

"Give me the light so I can see this!" Dean demanded.

Sam held it up over his head. Down in the hole, Dean couldn't get to it. Then his older brother glared and said, "May I have the light?" Sam gave it to him. "Anyone ever tell you how annoying you are, Sammy?"

"Really, Dean? Am I the one grabbing stuff?" Sam asked. He was happy to have won. They inspected the carving more closely. "It _is_ a goblet. And look at that, there are four ornamental posts in the garden, but the other three are holding identical planters full of flowers. This goblet doesn't match anything. Did Bobby describe it to you?"

"He said it's kind of plain. Just like a plain wooden cup with a touch of scrolling around the rim, pretty but nothing special. And there's a K under the base. But we can't tell that from this perspective of the carving."

"But it's plain," Sam said. "May I have the light, please?" Dean gave him a dirty look and passed it over. Sam moved the beam through the garden. "Look at how embellished this is. The horse is carved down to the strands of the mane and tail, the ribbon on its reins. The flowers, the leaves on the trees, even those wine grapes there! And then you have this plain goblet. That looks like scrolling on the rim, and it's the most unadorned piece on this whole carving. Charles Warwick started this maybe, or else why would it be there?"

"And now I've got his finger," Dean said. "His possibly demon-summoning finger. But we need his blood!"

Sam didn't want Lucy to know about the finger or their suspicions. So he wouldn't tell her. They filled in the hole and patted down lumps of grass to make it look natural. The streets remained quiet as they walked back to school. Once they had crept back into the dorm, Sam said, "Happy studying."

"Shut up, Sam," Dean said. After a quick shower, Sam went back to his room. He should have studied for his test, but he was asleep the second his head hit the pillow.

Author's Note: CHICKEN LAYS EGG. I've been editing the chapter above for the last hour with Expecto Patronum crowing about her amazing accomplishment in the background. I tried to drown her out with the Game of Thrones soundtrack but was unsuccessful. So, in the hopes of shutting her up, I promised her fame by announcing it here to impress the Internetz. SHE LAID AN EGG, PEOPLE!


	21. Chapter 21

**Chapter Twenty-One**

They weren't Latin words, or Greek ones, or anything. The incantation was in the language of some demon gibberish. To summon the Kronoan, someone dropped blood into the goblet and said _yanu seres'tai kronoan_. The best that Bobby could figure was that it meant something like _the door is open, Kronoan_. Then the goblet transformed itself into the door for the demon to step through. To close it was trickier, due to the blood coming from the same source, and the incantation was spoken in reverse. _Kronoan, seres'tai yanu._ Best guess there was that it meant _Kronoan, the door is closed_.

A penny hit his desk. Dean watched it roll off and fall to the floor. He wondered if August Hilman, the first victim of this demon, had acted anything like Shawn Percival. Shawn was just a real ugly human being, and Adam, who was busy whispering, "Good one!" to Shawn, wasn't much prettier.

But no matter their ugliness, it didn't mean they deserved someone calling down a _demon _upon them_,_ not Shawn Percival or Travis Dillinger Lane or Hilary Warwick. Not even Adam. How coincidental that a boy named Ricardo Rodriguez was the star of the school in music, one of his four instruments happening to be trumpet just like Adam, and then the self-slamming door took off two of his fingers. Dean thought Adam might be even uglier than he appeared, because another trumpeter had a mental break and dropped out years ago. Adam was moving up chairs by just wiping out whoever stood in the way. Dean pegged Shawn for the girl who got dyslexia. She had been his tutor. Rumor said he tried to buy her off, get her to do the work for him, and she not only spurned him but also told the principal about the offer. Shawn had nearly been expelled.

Last year, a sophomore girl had_ eaten_ forty CDs and been sent to the hospital for emergency surgery. The school hushed up that one, but Dean unearthed it. He also unearthed that the girl was fighting with Amber Irving at the time. They shared a dorm room, and the girl was fed up since Amber played her music so loudly. The doctors asked _why_ the girl had done such a thing, and she had no answer. She said that she couldn't stop herself. After that, Amber had a big room all to herself.

A second penny rolled over his desk.

What he had learned from being a hunter's son was how easy it was to be poisoned. People didn't realize the door they were opening when they decided to play with the supernatural. Maybe a girl did a spell to make some boy fall in love with her. And maybe it didn't backfire, and what she had was what she wanted. But what did she walk away with? She learned that what the boy wanted didn't matter. There was a magical override. _ He_ could be set aside for her fantasy. He was secondary. Irrelevant. She could reform the world the way she wanted it to be, and he was just a player on her stage. So what happened when she wanted a job and didn't get it? Or had a kid that wasn't making her proud? Or moved to a new place and hated her neighbors? Or found out her dying father was leaving more inheritance to her brother?

Once you opened that door, it was hard to close it. Flip the page to a new spell. Find a demon. The world could be remade. Bump off the better candidate standing between her and the job. Give the kid a magical makeover. Direct some species of Hell creature to the neighbors' address. Lose the brother. The first Kronoan club was seven boys dealing with two genuine jackasses. Dean didn't have any proof that they went on to dabble in magic, but someone passed on that information to a son. He didn't think that all of them had; some of those seven might have felt guilty. They figured that they'd let memories lie, bury it and go on to do good things. But all it took was one, just _one_ to mention it to one son, just _one_ of all of those sons, and it continued. And those sons didn't go after bullies, just people who got in their way.

The Percival kid might have been the one to find the goblet in a family shop. After Penworth, he lived his whole life like he was atoning for something. But what about smiling Charles Warwick? Dean didn't like him purely from the picture. Or the Baron boy, whose descendent Adam was a nasty little dude. But one of those original seven told. Got a problem while you're at Penworth, son? Well, listen to dear old Dad. He's got the solution. And then Junior went off to Penworth and passed it on to his little friends. Aw, you hate Billy Myers, too? Well, let's get him!

These were wealthy kids used to getting what they wanted, and some of them were very spoiled. Not all of them. Pete had really embarrassed Dean. He said hello now, and learned through Kappie that Pete's family could practically buy this school. And you know what Pete did every weekend? He rode a bike over to the helping hands place a mile away and volunteered his time with developmentally delayed kids. Just because Pete's wallet was fat didn't automatically render him an asshole. Dean just assumed.

So the seven boys had their sons. Some were nice guys who wouldn't be interested in magical takedowns of school rivals. Others wouldn't hesitate. And that knowledge got passed down to the third generation, the fourth, the fifth . . . like a virus that circled the world and then circled it again and again without cease. Always finding fresh victims.

A third penny hit his desk and rolled off to the floor. The teacher yelled, "Shawn!"

"I wasn't doing anything-"

"Dean is the one not doing anything! March yourself out of here, Shawn! What do you think this is, a kindergarten?"

A chair squeaked. A door slammed. This was magic, Dean thought. This was what it did, had the power to stretch through time and transform great-great-grandchildren from regular bullies to maniacs. This was why you didn't play in it, because you couldn't foresee all of the consequences. You left it alone, just like you didn't stick your hand into dark places in the woodpile. Because something might bite.

When the bell rang, he slung his backpack over his shoulder and looked over to Adam. The guy could only be first by cheating. That was the kind of loser he was, so low to the ground that he bumped off people to win first chair on trumpet. Not by practicing, not accepting that he just wasn't as good . . . he'd taken off a guy's _fingers_.

It wasn't going to work with Charles Warwick's finger, or the fluid they had from Albert Dillinger. Dean knew that. But it was all he had, so tonight he would try. Because when the Sixth Gen hit this school, it had to stop. Magic wasn't the solution. If you sucked at trumpet or acting, sports or academics, you sucked. Either practice or study, get better or give up. Going down to the basement to grease your path with a demon was only going to poison you as a person, and then poison your kids and your grandkids . . .

"What are you looking at?" Adam said with a sneer.

"The most pathetic thing in the world," Dean said, and left the classroom.

Author's Note: Expecto Patronum is so bedazzled at her Internet fame that she is blessedly QUIET today. For now. So I thank you. And yesterday I embarrassed myself. The ground suddenly started to move around my shoes as I was walking to the car. I leaped six inches into the air and screamed like the mighty warrior (abject coward) that I am. It was only two lizards running for cover. In my defense, they were enormous and blended in perfectly with the driveway. *hangsheadinshame*


	22. Chapter 22

**Chapter Twenty-Two**

Author's Note: I have written about twenty books altogether, and most of them in the early drafts have one chapter that is simply determined to be a stinker.* Everything comes out wrong through Draft 1 and Draft 2 and Draft 3, and usually by Draft 4 I dismantle the entire chapter and start again from scratch. Chapter 22 of Idle Hands was this story's stinker. So here is the final version, which is Draft 6 (or it could be Draft 7, I've lost count). It bears little resemblance to the original – which is a good thing.

Also, the chicken is currently summoning up a demon (at the top of her lungs) to take revenge against DarkRule. Expecto Patronum has a deathly fear of towels, and DarkRule shook out the dirt from the mudroom towel in the backyard. It remains to be seen if I will live long enough to complete Idle Hands at all.

* Two of those twenty books were stinkers all the way through, which is why they are now buried in this writer's graveyard of dreams.

"I didn't know, Sam," Lucy muttered at the carrel. They had taken a pair of them far from Kappie to give him some quiet.

"I know," Sam said. She had listened to him without freaking out the other day, and now she wanted to read every single word of his notes. He was trying to study, but his eyes kept drifting back to her finger tracing under the lines of script.

"This isn't something my family talks about around the dinner table or anything."

"Lucy, you don't have to defend yourself," Sam said.

"I'm not," Lucy said, yet her eyes were pained. "But how could they _do_ this to their own classmates? I want to show this all to my father and make him explain it to me."

"No," Sam said hastily. "That's a bad idea, and I haven't linked anything definitively to him-"

Her laugh was bitter. "You have. You just don't know it. Right here." She flipped through the pages to a boy named Richard Challis, who died while the fourth generation of the Kronoan Club was passing through Penworth. Sam knew that this death had supernatural origins, since his heart literally burst in his chest. The coroner attributed it to drug use or a congenital defect for lack of any other explanation.

"I never could figure out why that kid was a target," Sam said. "He wasn't top of his class or gifted in sports or music; he didn't lead any clubs or have anything remarkable about him. He wasn't bullying anyone from any account."

"He was dating my mom," Lucy said. "They met in ninth grade and hit it off. She still talks about that, how they looked at one another and everything just clicked. Ricky was so sweet. They planned to go to the same college together and get married afterwards. Other guys tried to catch her eye, my mom is beautiful, but when it's right, it's right. And then he died in the beginning of their senior year, just walked up and said hello, gave her a kiss and dropped dead."

"So your father-"

"He was one of those other guys. When people ask how they met, he laughs about how he couldn't get the prettiest girl in school to notice him no matter how hard he tried. Well, he got her to notice this way. He bumped off the competition and swooped in. That's _sick_. If my mom knew about this, she wouldn't believe it but if she did, she would divorce him." The Warwick pages drifted under her fingers, from her great-great-grandfather down to her sister.

Then she closed the binder. "I don't want to be related to these people. I don't want to share a last name."

"Not all of your relatives were involved in this," Sam said, feeling desperate at the sadness in her face. "And you're not responsible for they did."

"But now I know, and that makes me responsible for whatever happens going on from here," Lucy said. "For what they do, and what the Percivals and Irvings, the Dillingers and Barons do. I _know_ what they're doing. Sam, how do you stop them?"

"Dean has some ideas to try out tonight," Sam said, not wanting to get into the specifics of what was in the case. "We'll take care of this, Lucy. We'll get rid of the demon."

"But that's it. That's all you'll do," Lucy said. "It's not a criticism. It's a fact. That's fantastic what you and your brother and your father do, it's so brave, but you can't charge my father with murder, or my grandfather, or Travis for what he did to Braden. And they should be charged. You can't charge Amber with assault for setting a demon on her roommate, or Shawn his tutor. This supernatural stuff doesn't exist to the regular world. So the Kronoan Club loses their go-to method of problem solving, and that's all. When they're _criminals_. No one is held accountable. They should feel like the lowest scum, and they won't! They'll just move on with their lives and leave all of their victims behind to rot."

It was just another ugly truth of hunting, that justice was limited in its reach. Sam took his binder back and she said, "They shouldn't be going on to Ivy League colleges, to big jobs and fancy weddings. They shouldn't go home to mansions but jail cells. My father should wake up every day in shame for what he did. My mother should know exactly what kind of twisted soul she married. Braden's parents should know their son was murdered, not a runaway. And none of those things, _none_ of them, Sam, are things that hunters can solve."

"That's just how it is," Sam said. "Lucy, promise me that you won't confront your father with this. It will only make everything worse. We'll kill the demon and you won't have this weight on your conscience, because it won't continue. This will be okay. _Promise_ me."

Her face was sulky as she said, "I promise not to confront my father. But it's not okay, Sam. _Someone_ has to feel responsible for this."

Kappie's watch beeped, the sound coming faintly down the aisle. Sam said, "But you can't make people feel responsible. You can only force them to stop, which is what is going to happen. How they feel . . . that belongs to them."

"They _should_ feel it though." Lucy pushed back her chair and got up. He did the same, jamming everything into his backpack as she slung hers over her shoulders. "You know what should happen to them? They should go through what they so blithely unloaded on others. They should be forced to feel it, the fear and the pain and the horror. That would make it real. Maybe there's a demon who can do that."

Startled, he stopped packing to stare at her. "Uh . . . yeah, that's not the solution."

A small smile was on her lips. "Sam, you're such a dummy. It was a joke." And she kissed his cheek. They left the library with it burning invisibly in his skin.

The liquid in the ampoule, the finger . . . they were such small chances. He didn't know why he still hoped so hard, but at breakfast when Dean shook his head from across the room, Sam was genuinely disappointed. He wanted the portal closed, the goblet destroyed, and to go on about his day. Sinking back into his seat, he looked around for Lucy. She hadn't come in yet. Sometimes she skipped breakfast in favor of a little extra sleep.

Beside him, Kappie was mumbling in Greek for a quiz they had coming up in second period. It was ridiculous how hard Kappie worked in his classes just to purposely sabotage himself on a couple of questions. Sam was really smart, but Kappie was a genius. He learned things fast and perfectly, capable of A+ yet pulling in A-/B+ range grades to stay off the radar. That was sad. Kappie should be graduating from this school as its valedictorian in four years. Instead, he made sure that he didn't shine too brightly. Someone malicious might be watching.

The boys reviewed vocabulary until it was time to go to class. They kept a wary eye out for Shawn in case he was feeling pushy again. But he was still sitting at a table and chatting with his friend Adam. Dean sat at another table and looked at the backs of their heads darkly while he finished his cereal.

"Hilary? Hey, have you seen Hilary?" a senior girl shouted.

"I knocked on her door. She's not coming down today," someone responded. "Cramps."

Last blood. It was frustrating to not have an answer, and even more frustrating to have an impossible answer. But maybe that wasn't the right one. Information didn't always come neatly explained in books and old notes, especially with supernatural beings that, much like Kappie at Penworth, flew under the radar. Bobby had never dealt with a Kronoan; none of the many hunters he knew ever dealt with one; none of the long-dead hunters whose notes Bobby kept dealt with one either. Sam thought that Bobby knew pretty much everything there was to know about demons, but that he didn't told Sam just how low to the ground a Kronoan rat was.

He sat down in his Latin class, expecting Lucy to have beaten them. Then he turned to the door since her desk was empty. The minute bell rang, and the late bell without her coming in. The teacher marked off attendance silently and placed it in the folder for the office aide to retrieve. Latin went on without Sam paying much attention, and when the bell rang, he looked down at a page of notes without any memory of taking them.

He wasn't going to be here by senior year, so he went ahead and scored one hundred percent on his vocabulary quiz in Greek. Kappie got a ninety flat. This was how he stayed alive. He was willing to play this game, but Sam wasn't. Kappie should have gotten the hundred, _plus_ the extra credit question on the board that Sam had had no clue on. It was okay to come in second to a mind like that, just like Allan had been fine coming in second to Braden in track.

At lunch, he got his tray and searched the tables for Lucy. She still wasn't around. Spotting Eleanor from Latin, who had a dorm room near Lucy's, Sam asked where she was. Eleanor shrugged. "Sick at the infirmary probably. Becky, Taylor, and Rachael all had to go because their colds are so bad. Half of our hallway has got it. I've been feeling crappy all day."

Sick. Through his afternoon classes, Sam searched his mind for what to do. He couldn't take a cup of soup out of the cafeteria, and there were undoubtedly tons of tissues at the infirmary already. After the last bell, he let himself out of the gate like he was going to the athletic field and picked flowers instead for a long time. He wanted the bouquet to be perfect. Then, feeling like a fool, he walked through campus with them to the infirmary.

When he stepped inside, it was to a volley of sneezing coming from behind the white curtain to the cots. The harried nurse looked up from her desk and said, "Where does it hurt?"

"I just wanted to drop these off for Lucy," Sam said about the flowers.

"Lucy?"

"Lucy Warwick."

Skimming her finger down a line of names on her desk, the nurse said, "She's not here."


	23. Chapter 23

**Chapter Twenty-Three**

He'd gone around and around in his mind, around and around with Bobby, and finally, around and around with his father. That had been a hard call, keeping his temper while Dad was losing his. The phone call lasted all through dinner. Dean clung to his cool like a precipice, and he addressed his father like one hunter to another. The focus was not on what had been done, but where the hunt went from here.

Dad finally calmed down and said the answer was there, it was always there, and sometimes you just had to come at it from a different direction. Maybe there was a spell that could recreate Charles Warwick's blood. Dean was astounded that he had not thought of that himself. But Dad didn't want Dean to do any of it, just keep his nose clean at this school until adults arrived to take care of the matter. And don't involve Sam! Once Dad's case was done, which it would be soon, he was coming. Hold on.

Dean didn't have the research material at Penworth to figure out what spell might be useful, and Bobby was searching. The garbled notes about the Kronoan had been faxed to a specialist on demon tongues to gain her perspective, and Bobby had talked to her just today. She was a retired hunter herself, and while she had never dealt with a Kronoan specifically, she _had_ dealt with other rats of Hell. Warped spells didn't all work in the same way. A roomful of rats with the exact same spell would get different results if they put on a show, somewhat like amateur alchemists all trying to perform the same complicated experiment to make gold out of lead. They were each doing something wrong a little differently from everyone else. Some were going to turn that lead bar into silver. Others were going to make one little spot of gold on that whole bar. Some might turn it wholly into gold, only to watch it disintegrate or change back into lead. And because these were the same spells yet different spells, in a way, the solutions to taking those spells away was also the same yet different. Blood was a definite component in the solution to a Kronoan. The notes were clear to her on that point. But the notes didn't answer, and _couldn't_ answer, what last blood exactly took down this specific Kronoan. Its spell was warped, so the solution was warped. Last blood made her think of the youngest direct-line descendant of Charles Warwick, if he was the one of the original seven to summon the demon. Dean knew who that was from Sam's notes, a toddler cousin of Hilary and Lucy Warwick named Chester.

There were solutions. Getting some of Chester's blood, recreating Charles' blood . . . Bobby was even considering that a spell might be in order to summon a lebreo. He didn't like dealing with them, but a lebreo took on temporarily the abilities and disabilities of any demon it came across. Had it ever come across this Kronoan, it would know its weakness. A lebreo would sell it for a price. Get the right blood whatever that was, close the portal, destroy the goblet . . . there was always a solution. He still wished that this school had just had a vampire, where the solution was no more complicated than a pointy stick.

It was the point in a hunt where Dean had to step back, since he could do no more. That frustrated him, yet it was also good to know that the answer would be revealed in time. He sat on his bed in thought as the dorm settled for the night. In his hand was the scrap of paper with the words on it, the words that closed the door to the demon. Tomorrow he'd eat a massive breakfast, since fruit for lunch and no dinner at all was making his stomach burble in complaint.

He heard a quiet tap. Figuring it was his brother, Dean pulled the chair out from under the knob and opened it. "I've been talking to- oh. Hi, Kappie. Come in."

Kappie looked nervous as he closed the door. "I thought Sam would be up here."

"No. He's not down in your room?" Dean asked. Obviously Sam wasn't down there if Kappie was up here looking for him.

Shoving his hands into his pockets, Kappie said, "The last time I saw him, he was running out of the girls' dormitory."

"_Sam?_" What had Sam been doing in the girls' dormitory? It must have had to do with his little girlfriend, but his brother was such a square that Dean couldn't picture him sneaking in there to see her. "When was that?"

"It was almost dinnertime. I was taking a break in the library and walking by the windows. He hadn't shown up to study, but I saw him down there. He didn't show at dinner either, and now he's not in our room. I thought maybe he was here with you."

"No," Dean said, gesturing to the empty room.

"Look, the thing is that I like Sam. He's a nice guy," Kappie said, looking even more nervous now. "I don't really know you, but he likes you so I guess you're okay, too. So maybe he'll listen to you, since he won't listen to me. This is a good school. But it's not a safe school. Just trust me. He's poking his nose into places that he shouldn't. I live with him and I know. You have to stop him."

They examined one another for a long moment, and then Dean said, "Kappie, what do you think really goes on at this school? Say in your wildest fantasies?"

"I don't know," Kappie said solemnly. "I just know how to deal with it. I don't want anything to happen to Sam. Please just pass along that message so he hears you. Whatever he is out there doing right now, he probably shouldn't be doing it."

"When you saw him running out of the girls' dormitory, did you see which direction he was going?"

"Yeah. He was heading for the admin building, running like a madman with his arms almost pinwheeling," Kappie said. "I thought the girls' RA would shoot out the door next trying to catch him, but no one else came out."

The admin building.

Dean leaped off his bed and stuffed the scrap of paper into his pocket. The kid watched in bewilderment. "Is everything okay?"

_Oh God_. Sam had gone down to the basement. Dean knew that like he knew the back of his hand. Whatever had possessed Sam to do that? Shoving on his shoes, Dean said, "Kappie, listen to me. Did anything weird happen today with Lucy? Did those two fight or anything?"

"No. She wasn't even in class this morning. A bunch of the girls on her floor are sick."

Dean had a very bad feeling in his gut. Falling onto the floor at his closet, he reached under his dresser for the blade he had hidden there the day the Winchesters arrived at Penworth. Kappie's eyes widened to see it. "That's a big knife. Those aren't allowed-"

"I know they're not allowed," Dean said. He pushed it into his waistband. "Kappie, listen to me. I know what's going on in this school, and it's crazy. You won't even believe me, so I'm not going to tell you. But you're right: this isn't a safe place. So here's what you're going to do: go back downstairs. Go to bed. Act normal. Keep playing the game you play, because that's what keeps you alive. Got me?"

"Okay?" Kappie whispered, his eyes still on the handle of the blade.

Dean pulled out a lighter and holy water as well, which he shoved in his pocket. When you didn't know what to pack, you packed everything. "Good man. You'll be okay."

"You're not going to kill someone, are you?"

Opening his door, Dean said, "No." What he would be killing wasn't human, and he didn't even know how to kill it. He left the kid standing there and ran for all he was worth.


	24. Chapter 24

**Chapter Twenty-Four**

Everything he had done was wrong. When a girl on Lucy's floor said that the last time she saw Lucy was that morning before breakfast, going upstairs to Hilary's room, Sam should not have gone upstairs alone to check it out. But he did. No one answered his knock and the door was unlocked, so he let himself inside. Going unarmed, without anyone knowing where he was, into an uncertain situation. That was really, really dumb.

Hilary's room was trashed like a struggle had taken place, and the scattered papers on the floor made his stomach plunge. They were photocopies of the pages that Lucy picked up in the hallway for him. She had confronted Hilary with them.

Neither sister was in here now. What would Hilary have done with her? Gone home? Yet students didn't have cars on campus and a key ring was right there on the desk . . .

It was daylight when Lucy did this, yet everyone would be in the dining hall or in class. If Hilary had taken her down to that secret room, with a little luck she could have done it without being noticed.

Sam had already made some big errors in judgment for a hunter's son, and then he made another one. All he could think about was getting to Lucy. That made him fly over campus to admin like a crazy person. It might have been too late already, the demon set on Lucy to shut her up so the club could go on and on and on . . .

The doors down to the basement were locked.

No. The lock was not closed all of the way, just enough to make it look locked. The chains were very loose. He undid everything and tossed it aside. Propping open the doors, he started down the flight of stairs to the basement. The lights were on.

The only thing he did right was to go down quietly. But that didn't really matter when one of the doors squeaked to announce his entrance. It was silent below, save for the humming of the lights, and the trudging of feet echoing down from admin on the floor above. He should not have told Lucy anything, sent her from his room pissed and unaware of the larger story going on at this school. That would have been the smart thing to do.

Reaching the landing, he looked around at the aisles of boxes and saw no one. Quickly he wended his way to the back of the room and crouched down to the crawlspace. It was just like before, the flickering light from within.

Except when he poked his head out on the other side, he saw Lucy. She was tipped over on the sofa, her eyes glassy with tears and her hands tied in front of her with rope. Seeing him there, she shook her head and whispered frantically, "G-go back." Then something hit him hard on the back of the head, and he was gone.

When he woke, he was also on the sofa. His head was throbbing so much that his vision was blurry. So he closed his eyes, hoping that they would clear. His hands were tied behind his back. Lucy was behind him, crying and whispering his name. The rope around her wrists rasped against his arm.

"Shut up, Lucy," Hilary was saying.

"You shouldn't have hit him! What is _wrong_ with you?"

"I ask myself that about you every day, little sister." Something was scratching on the floor as Hilary spoke. Sam opened his eyes again and was forced to close them. That had been a real wallop she delivered, like she didn't care if it killed him or not.

Lucy pressed her forehead to his back and whispered, "Sam? Sam?"

"I told you what you could have had here! I _told_ you!" Hilary exclaimed in a temper while the scratching continued. "And it wasn't like we aren't fair, freak eyes, all you have to do is agree to keep your mouth shut about it if you don't want in. Others had no problems doing that. Myra Lane is doing that right now! She can be a goody-goody and we don't have anything to do with her-"

"That's not being a goody-goody, that's just an . . . an accessory to the crime!" Lucy argued. "How is it good of her to know what's going on to her own classmates and not _say_ anything?"

"She knows what's good for her. But she's just a Dillinger. You're really the one who should be ashamed. You know how embarrassing it was to call everyone, tell them to get over here because we have a big problem? And guess what, the problem is the one who _should_ be leading this after I graduate next June! You'll be the only one who can do it, and you won't! You're the last one here until cousin Bradley comes long after you graduate."

Sam opened his eyes. It was better. Hilary was dragging chairs to the periphery of the shield around the door. One of the legs was caught in another piece of furniture and she bent down to free it. Feeling him move, Lucy said, "Sam?"

"I'm okay," Sam said.

"Not for long," Hilary grunted. The chair broke loose and she pulled it closer to the shield.

"You can't do anything to him!" Lucy said.

"Why not? Are you going to stop me?" Hilary leaned over the back of the chair and smiled beautifully at both of them. "Oh, Lucy. I don't take guff off August Hilmans, not even when they come in the shape of my little sister and the guy she slums with. What you don't get is that you're part of a dynasty. That's bigger than its individuals. You and I are links in a great chain, but you're a weak one. The weak ones get pulled out so the chain stays strong."

"You're insane," Sam blurted. That wasn't what a family dynasty meant to him.

"Is that your official diagnosis, hunter's boy? Thank you!" Hilary replied in a voice laden with sarcasm. "But I'm not insane. I'm just protecting my family from yours. This is our school, and you're riff-raff put here to kill time." Checking her watch, she sighed. "And now I've had to spend my whole day taking care of this problem, since some are off at athletic meets, orchestra practice, and museum field trips going late."

"Sorry to inconvenience you," Sam said.

"You should be sorry. Who do you think you are? Marching in here to play detective, poisoning my sister against me? This isn't your place, and it wasn't your game. All you had to do was keep your head down, and show some respect to your betters."

"You aren't my better," Sam spat.

The door creaked in the other room. Footsteps clomped down the flight and a barking laugh rang through the basement. Lucy shivered behind Sam. With a smile even sweeter than the first one, Hilary said, "I guess we're about to find out."


	25. Chapter 25

**Chapter Twenty-Five**

He spotted them in the darkness.

Night had fallen hard and fast over Penworth, and it was hard to tell how many there were when the shapes kept merging and separating, merging and separating again with the shadows. There were at least five, and Shawn was one of them. Dean knew that because Shawn wasn't trying all that hard to keep quiet. Adam was another, identified only by the sound of his voice. The others were silent.

Dean was lucky to come out of the dorm on their heels rather than in front of them. He trailed along in their wake, staying far in the distance since long stretches of campus were barren of trees or anything else with which to conceal himself. They were going in the direction of the admin building.

If this situation got out of control . . . he would grab Sam and get the hell out of here, hitchhike away from the school and find a pay phone to call Bobby. Then they could come back at this thing with a full arsenal, prepared for whatever they found. Creeping along past a quiet building, he thought, _dammit, Sammy_.

He stepped on some fallen leaves, which crackled. One of the figures turned around as Dean ducked down beneath a window. There was no moon, and only thin yellow shafts coming from lights around the school. Shawn passed through one, walking backwards for a moment to look out into the night. Another figure separated from the shadows, a girl. Dean thought it might be Amber Irving. If it was, he guessed one of the others was her brother Corey.

The group of them made the administration building and circled to the back. Dean waited for them to vanish around the corner. It seriously needed to be raked here and he could hardly see where he was going. When more dry leaves crackled under his shoe, he hunkered down behind a bush and held his breath. No one came back to look. Faintly, he heard creaking. They were going down to the basement.

"Aw, come on," a guy complained moments later. The doors to the basement were squeaking. The voice belonged to Mr. Bug Up The Nose, Travis Lane. The guy was a real whiner. Dean peered around and then slunk along to the doors once they had closed. When he guessed that enough time had elapsed for them to be off the stairs and going through the tables, he opened one door with excruciating slowness.

Once inside, he closed it the same way. It was dim in here. He wished that it were even dimmer. Carefully, he picked his way down the stairs and listened to the scuffling of people going at a crawl into the secret room. Adam chanted, "I see London, I see France-" and then he howled with pain at a thud. It sounded like someone had kicked him, and presumably a girl since he said, "Bitch! You almost broke my nose!"

Dean stole around the corner. Boxes, boxes everywhere, and not a head in sight. He might have a blade, yet he was seriously outnumbered. From the secret room, voices were coming loud and clear. Adam was overriding everyone. "What the hell? Dude, she hit me in the face for no reason!"

"I had a reason," Amber retorted. "Calm down. It's not like I could make you any uglier."

"I'm bleeding!"

"Yeah? Well, so is Hilary, and she's not being a big baby about it."

"Shut up," Hilary said lazily. "We've got bigger problems."

"Oooh," said an adult male voice that Dean didn't know. "Hilary Warwick, lovelier and lovelier with each summoning. What have you done to your hair?"

"I gave it what it deserves," Hilary replied. It had to be the Kronoan demon. Dean came around the last set of tables and got down to his hands and knees. He crawled to the gap in the wall and looked through. The blade was in his fist.

The room was crammed full of people. Shawn was lifting Sam from a sofa and setting him on a chair. His arms were bent behind his back like they were tied. With his shirt hiked up over his nose, Adam was muttering on an armchair that he wouldn't be able to play his trumpet with his face screwed up. Corey and Amber were on opposite ends of the room, neither looking very interested in the proceedings. She was checking her nails, which were painted purple and flecked with something that made them sparkle in the flickering light from the doorway.

Lucy had been behind Sam on the sofa. Her hands were tied in front. Shawn picked her up and set her in another chair. She kicked at his legs and he staggered while walking away.

Hilary was standing upon the whole red dot of the scrolled circle. Her bloody hand was pressed to the invisible boundary, but it wasn't throwing her. A black-eyed demon was inside. In a dapper pair of pants and vest with a garish purple shirt, the sleeves were rolled up. His black hair was so oiled that it glinted. A trim figure and not overly muscled, Dean thought that he looked like a card shark. A successful one, since his clothes were top of the line. With an arrogant and calculating face, he smiled to see a slight shimmer in the air of the boundary coming down. Then he clasped Hilary's unwounded hand and kissed the back of it. A bloody blade was on the floor by her feet.

"A problem so soon, my lady?" the Kronoan said. "It feels like I was just here."

"Three problems," Hilary said ruefully. "The first-"

"Just a moment!" The Kronoan dropped her hand, lifted his head, and breathed deeply. Then his eyes settled on Lucy. She shivered to see the full blackness of them. "What have we here? The latest expression of good old Charlie! Oh, and you're the one I sensed since the very first day of school. Out with the old, in with the new!" Laughing uproariously, he waved a hand in dismissal at Hilary and beamed with utmost fondness upon the younger Warwick.

Irritated, Hilary said, "Sadly, she's one of the pro-"

Just as it occurred to Dean that one person was missing from the room, hands closed over his ankles and jerked him back. He crash landed on his abdomen and was dragged out from under the table to the narrow aisle. A hand closed over the back of his head, intending to bash him face-first into the floor, and he thrashed to break free.

The voices stopped within the secret room as he rolled over. Boxes fell over Dean and Travis as they struggled, receipts sifting around them everywhere and the blade knocked away. Travis threw a punch and Dean jerked to the side, letting the kid punch the floor and shout in pain. As he fell back, clutching his hand, Dean thrust under the mess of boxes and receipts in search of his blade.

Then it was there, pressed to his neck. And pressed hard. Dean said, "Okay, okay!" as Travis dug it in.

"I say when it's okay," hissed Travis hatefully. Nodding to the flickering crawlspace, he ordered, "Crawl."


	26. Chapter 26

**Chapter Twenty-Six**

They were arguing.

He wriggled his wrists about within the bindings, hoping to prize free his hands. The entire time he and Lucy had been on the sofa, he'd picked at hers fruitlessly. Her hands were still bound in her lap, and his were still behind his back. Dean was shoved into a chair and his hands bound behind him as well.

There was the slightest bit more room in Sam's ropes. He pulled and strained for more. These had been well done, but not expertly done. There was a difference. From the slight movements on another chair, Sam knew that his brother was testing his own restraints.

The bloody knife that Hilary had used to cut open her hand was on the floor. Sam wished that he could make it fly over with his mind and saw through his ropes. Dean's blade was now in the possession of Travis, who was using it to carve his initials on the back of an armchair.

The demon was listening in amusement as the others debated what to do with the three of them. The spell could only be used on one, and something had to be done with the other two. They couldn't even agree on which one the spell should be used upon, with Shawn and Travis arguing in favor of Dean and Hilary leaning to Sam. Corey put in his vote for Sam, and Amber just wanted to know if this was going to be over soon since she had other things to do. When Adam asked if those things included kicking more guys in the face, she said top of the list was shoving the mouthpiece of his trumpet up his ass. Then the only way he'd be able to play it would be by eating beans.

"Use the spell on the little would-be hunter, and we'll stab the other two and throw them in the pond," Hilary said.

Only Travis blinked at that. "Dude, she's your sister."

Hilary was nonplussed. "The second she sided against me, we lost all ties."

The Kronoan clucked at Lucy and shook his head. She enthralled him it seemed, since his eyes kept drawing back to her as the commotion went on. "What a shame, sweet child. I am only here to be your friend. Your support, just as I have been for generations to your family and friends of your family. Didn't your father teach you the lesson of August?" When she did not answer, he went on. "How they wept upon my shoulder, those first seven! Metaphorically speaking, of course. That giant lad August, his flying fists and acid soul. They spoke to me through black eyes and puffy lips, their schoolwork torn in two and projects destroyed. To see such brilliant boys brought low! But they were learning an important lesson about the world: to protect oneself. Only children look to parents to save them; adults look to themselves. Those boys decided to be strong, and with that decision, they became men."

"Whatever lets you sleep at night," Lucy said sarcastically as the others discussed dumping grounds other than the pond. Sam knew that Lucy was terrified, but less and less of it was showing. The first demon of her life, a sister plotting her demise, her wrists in ropes, and Lucy was just looking pissed.

The demon chucked her chin and she jerked away. Sam thrashed in his chair. Laughing, the Kronoan said, "Such pride, all of you Warwicks from the first to the last here before me." Then he bowed grandly. "Let me prove to you that I am here to help. Is there no one at this school who troubles you, child? Do you have a tormentor in the hallways or classrooms or on the athletic field? Someone whose joys are borne from cruelties cast your way?"

"Yes, her name is Hilary Warwick, and she's standing right there," Lucy said. "Everyone else has been pretty cool."

Dean was looking hard at Lucy and the demon. He mouthed _the last_ to Sam. But Lucy wasn't the last Warwick! There were younger direct-line descendants . . . but she was the last, the youngest one, to be enrolled at Penworth. This was a rat demon with a warped spell. Just as he could only visit his spell upon victims around the same age and in the same place as the first one in August Hilman . . . could he only be finished off by Warwicks around the same age and same place as the first?

That made Lucy the last blood. But it was only a guess.

"Wish you could just take out all of them and get this over with," Amber groused to the Kronoan.

"Ah, as do I," the Kronoan said ruefully. "It is indeed a sad truth about magic that it has its limits. I take it as far as it can go."

"Are you kidding me?" Dean exclaimed. "You pulled the short stick on magic and fooled them into thinking it's the big cigar? I've met so many more powerful demons than you."

"Shut up!" Shawn barked, and slapped the back of Dean's head.

"Trust me, this guy isn't on Satan's gift list every Christmas," Dean antagonized. "Satan doesn't even know who this one is."

Sam kept working at his restraints while Amber sighed. "Why am I here? This really doesn't have anything to do with me."

"You're here because our club is about to be exposed," Hilary snapped. "So let's take advantage of this. Kronoan, send that little one into the sun like Braden so there's nothing left-"

The Kronoan was looking at Lucy as he said, "But you know it doesn't work like that, Hilary. Magic is an untamed beast-"

"Well, yeah, when you suck at it," Dean put in.

"-and we can only guess where it will go. But I'm a very good guesser, and what a sense of humor magic has!" Stepping away from Lucy, the demon came over to Sam and inspected him thoughtfully. "Oh, yes. These are wise eyes. Old eyes. Yes, but in the body of one who is so young. The outside does not match the inside, would you say? I think this is how the spell might change him."

Amber sank into a chair. "I'll say anything to be able to go."

"Come on, use him on Dean," Shawn said to Hilary.

"My demon, my call. He's taking out Sam, and you and Travis can do whatever you like to Dean. Just make sure you clean up afterwards. I'll take care of Lucy." Hilary looked down to make sure that she was still upon the red circle. Frightened, Sam fought harder. The ropes were getting looser, but still not enough to slide his hands free. Dean grunted, since Shawn's big hands had just come down onto his shoulders to force him to stay in the chair.

"That's so annoying," Corey complained about the flickering light from the doorway.

The Kronoan looked over in surprise and then walked back to pat the frame of his insulted portal. "So, is that your command, Hilary?"

"It is," Hilary said. "Get rid of him."

"No!" Lucy screamed.

"Your wish is my command," the Kronoan demon said. He tugged up his sleeves theatrically, and stretched out his index finger to point at Sam.

Author's Note: Sheep do not have the best eyesight. Over the weekend, one little rejected triplet lamb who stopped growing had to be separated from the herd in order to ensure she was getting some nutrition. She is a black lamb and her name is Truffle. Truffle was naturally not very enthusiastic about being alone, since no lamb is an island. As she searched about forlornly for the herd, the neighbor's cat jumped over the fence into the backyard.

Mistaking the black cat for one of her black lamb buddies, Truffle galloped joyously across the grass in the cat's direction. _FRIEND!_ The poor cat looked up to this strange creature thundering its way, and its eyes widened to cartoonish proportions. _VELOCIRAPTOR!_ Then it hissed and ran vertically up the six-foot fence to escape, leaving Truffle to wonder how her lamb friend evanesced.

Thank you all for your reviews!


	27. Chapter 27

Author's Note: I apologize for the delay in putting this up! My Internet connection has gone from bad to worse over the month, and then it completely fell apart last week and rendered me unable to post. The phone company came out for the second time in eight days to replace copper wiring, and I hope this umpteenth attempt at posting a chapter goes through!

**Chapter Twenty-Seven**

"Stop!" Dean roared, startling everyone from the demon to bored-off-her-ass Amber. Craning his neck to look up, Dean cried, "Really, Shawn, is that how it's going to be? A girl snaps her finger and you cave? Don't you want to see how Mr. Big and Nasty here can take me apart?"

He could not get out of these damn ropes fast enough! The hands on his shoulders tightened and Hilary smirked. "Sorry, Dean, but the demon doesn't answer to Percivals. I get the final say on everything."

"It answers to Warwicks though!" Dean protested. "And you're not the only one in the room!"

"I'm the only one who matters," Hilary said. She leaned on her sister's shoulders and patted them with mocking affection. "She hasn't given blood to control this demon yet, so she's just a bystander like everyone else." Her cut hand was leaving a trail of blood on Lucy's shirt.

"And such a shame," the demon said hungrily to Lucy. There was nothing Dean could do but fight with these ropes and the heavy weight bearing down on him. The spell was going to nail Sam while Dean sat here helpless to do anything about it.

"So do it, demon! Let's get this over with," Hilary said.

The demon laughed, pointed at Sam, and said, "Take two!"

The spell came from his finger lazily, a slow stream of white smoke that coiled and spiraled through the air. Sam thrashed in his chair, jostling it a few inches along the floor, and Corey came up behind him to hold it steady. Dean heaved himself from side to side in desperation as Shawn laughed and held him down harder.

The smoke dipped and lifted, looped in circles and split in two only to come back together into a singular stream. The distance was closing between the tip of it and Sam, five feet and then four feet, three feet and-

Hilary screamed and wrenched away from Lucy, who had sunk her teeth into her older sister's hand. Blood gushed over Hilary's fingers and wrist as Lucy leaped from her chair and dove in front of the spell.

It struck her dead on in the chest. She choked as it went in.

The hands on Dean's shoulders had lightened, Shawn distracted and watching all of this in shock. With a hard wrench, the ropes slackened around Dean's wrists. He yanked them off and pulled away to stand. Before Shawn could formulate a response, Dean picked up the chair and belted him with it.

Shawn reeled and fell. The room burst into chaos. Hilary tumbled back upon Adam on the armchair, screaming about her injured hand with blood running fast; Amber scuttled over a sofa and dove for the crawlspace to get out. Corey put his hands on Sam's head, intending to snap his neck since the spell had gone awry, but Sam jerked forward to free himself and then Lucy fell onto him. The chair rocked back and spilled all three of them down. Travis just stared from where he was carving his initials, mouth open as the demon watched with a chuckle. Adam shoved Hilary off his lap. She sprawled to the floor, inadvertently kicking her bloody knife across the floor and through the flickering doorway, where it vanished with a deadly sizzle.

Dean only got a split second look at Lucy, still choking and with her hands remaining bound in front of her. Lines were appearing in her forehead, and around her lips and mismatched eyes. The backs of her hands were mottling as the fat was stripped away and replaced with wrinkles. A streak of white appeared in her long hair, running from the crown of her head down to where the end of the lock trailed on the ground. Then Shawn was up and lunging for him, so Dean couldn't look any longer.

A nasty grin was on Shawn's face. "Come here, boy." He reached out to grab a leg of the chair and Dean danced back out of reach. Stupid fighter, he had to remember this guy was a stupid fighter, all force and no balance. Jabbing out fast, Dean pegged him with the chair legs. Shawn staggered back and then came forward with determination to bring Dean down.

"Get off my leg!" Adam was shouting. "You got blood all over me!"

"You bitch!" Hilary screamed at her aging sister, who did not respond. Corey and Sam were wrestling among the pieces of furniture, Sam's hands free and an end table breaking as they crashed into it.

Shawn was driving Dean back toward that portal, dodging the jabs of the chair legs and then grabbing on to the seat. Just as he yanked, Dean let go of the chair. Without any of the expected resistance, Shawn staggered backwards with the chair flying out of his hands. Dean slugged him across the cheek. Almost falling over, Shawn caught himself on the sofa and turned back with a shout of rage. This time he didn't come with fists flying, but his arms out wide to knock Dean to the floor. Dean dodged it, but wasn't fast enough.

The light from the doorway flickered wildly. Jerked into a spin rather than pulled down to the ground, Dean lashed out without even knowing what he was lashing _at_. A fist glanced off his chin and Dean struck out blindly. Then his sight returned, Shawn standing in front of the portal and blocking some of the light. Dean shoved him hard.

It made a sound like butter being dropped into a pan on high heat, a sizzle that cut through the room as Shawn passed through. The last expression on his face was one of total surprise, and then he was gone. Dean had no idea where and didn't much care, just as long as Shawn didn't come back through to this room.

Travis came around the chair with the knife brandished in his fist. His eyes were wide and fearful. Dean said, "You want to think about this twice?" Then the knife fell from Travis' hand, and the guy was going over the sofa the way Amber had to get to the crawlspace. Hilary shouted for him to come back. Picking up his knife, Dean turned around to see Adam getting up with his eye to Travis.

Cowards! They were so brave setting this Kronoan on people, brave until someone called them on it. Dean shouted, "Come on!" But this wasn't their fight as much as it was Hilary's, and he looked over to her too late.


	28. Chapter 28

**Chapter Twenty-Eight**

He didn't know if he'd killed Corey, and he didn't care. Sam had smashed his head into the floor, not hit but _smashed_ with every ounce of strength in his body. The guy had gone limp at once. Letting go and turning over frantically, Sam kicked him on accident in his scrabble for Lucy. There was no response at the foot to the side, not even a grunt.

She was also still, until he huddled over her and whispered her name. The spell had left her unrecognizable, a frail ninety-year-old woman in a Penworth uniform and she was still aging. Her closed eyelids parted the smallest bit to hear his voice, and a sizzle made him look away. Hilary had just belted Dean to the portal, and he'd barely caught himself on the frame to keep from being incinerated. But some part of him had gone through, since he howled in pain and jerked away from the flickering light.

"Almost!" the demon cheered for Hilary. Then he laughed. "Just like Charlie, no one ever keeps down a Warwick for long." Utterly blasé about the fight, he leaned upon a chair. He had drained his spell but felt no danger. Then again, there was little reason for him to be alarmed when Hilary was taking care of Dean and Sam was down on the floor with Lucy. The others were gone and Sam hadn't even known. He and Corey had been fighting too hard.

"Sam," Lucy whispered. He looked down. Her hair was still long, but white and thin. The uniform was loose around her body, since she had shrunken. Struggling to force open fingers that wanted to curl in, she touched his cheek. Only her eyes were still the same, the vivid russet and the pale brown starfish swimming upon the green background. The whites were turning yellow, and even as he looked, the irises took on a cloudy cast.

He put his hand over hers and said in anguish, "_Lucy_."

She was going to die any moment now, her nineties having passed into her hundreds. Still, her filmy eyes were locked to his. "Sam . . . my . . . my blood. Get . . . get the . . ." Her throat failed her, but her eyes moved to the knife on the floor.

Sam launched away from her bird-like form and crawled across the floor. It smelled like singed flesh in the room. Hilary screamed as Dean caught hold of her hair, clearly intending to drag her to the doorway and throw her in. Just as Sam's hand closed on the handle, she nailed Dean with a drive to the arm. Sam looked up in surprise when that little was enough to make his brother let go. It was because Dean was burned there, his shirt blackened and the skin a mess.

Seeing Sam down on the floor, Hilary kicked him in the side. He flipped onto his back and struck a sofa, but still had the knife in hand. Dean got hold of her again and they fought brutally. She had had no martial arts training, that much was obvious, yet desperation was making her fight well and without limits, and Dean's burn was slowing him down.

"Sammy, give me the knife!" Dean ordered, but Sam was crawling back to Lucy as fast as he could. Would it even work if Lucy were dead? Her body had curled inwards in the short time he was gone, and she wasn't moving any longer.

Forcing one of her arms from her body, Sam whispered, "I'm sorry," and dragged the blade down the palm of her hand. A rattle of air escaped her throat, so she wasn't quite dead yet. The blood came out hesitantly, like it was drying up inside her veins just as her skin was drying up on her body.

The demon startled at the exposure of blood, his eyes widening with hunger. Sam covered the blade in Lucy's blood as her lips trembled slightly, from fear or pain or trying to speak, he did not know. He threw himself at the summoning circle and thrust the blade into it, screaming, _"Dean! Dean, I don't know the words!"_

Jerking a piece of paper from his pocket, Dean tossed it to Sam. Before he could reach it, the demon scooped it up deftly, read it, and said, "Oh! Well, we won't be needing that, will we?" and chucked it into his portal. It was burned so fast that it didn't even make a sizzle.

Dean ducked when Hilary lunged for him. Throwing himself down to the floor, he clasped his hands hard over Sam's upon the blade. The demon started forward with a hiss, and Dean shouted, "_Kronoan, seres'tai yanu!"_

It hit the room like an explosion, a tsunami of heat blasting out of the portal with such fury that it picked up everyone in the wave and threw them against the walls of the room. Chairs and sofas flipped over and some smashed to pieces. The demon cried, "No!"

Then it began to drag inwards, pulling Sam along the floor to the doorway like he weighed nothing at all. Cushions and broken legs of chairs shot past him to sizzle and vanish as the portal drank everything down. Still unconscious, Corey tumbled along helplessly to the light and disappeared. Sam shouted and reached for something to hold onto, anything, and then a hand stretched out and caught his wrist in an iron grip. It was Dean, holding desperately to a pipe along the wall.

Oblivious to the gale winds dragging everything to the portal, the demon stood rock-solid on the floor. But that was only because he was no longer fully corporeal, wood and material flowing through his form on its way to burn. He looked down to his chest in shock as a cushion passed through it, and then no one was there. The doorframe twisted and splintered.

"Help me! Help me!" Hilary was scrabbling over a sofa as it was dragged along the floor, her long hair streaming out straight behind her. Wrenching itself hard, the doorframe broke along the top and began to collapse downwards.

The pipe moaned in protest, one end freeing itself from the wall. Sam yelled to be suddenly moved a foot closer to the doorway. He tried to bury his foot into the ground, to brace himself a little, but the sofa smacked into his leg as it slid and scraped by. Hilary was not strong enough to force herself over the side of it. Holding on in panic to the arm, she looked over her shoulder and screamed as the far end was gobbled up in this strange fire.

The sofa overturned and spilled her to the ground. She lashed out wildly and caught onto Sam's ankle. The pipe groaned at the further weight and jiggled itself looser. Sam kicked to shake her free and she screamed as the portal singed her feet. A chair flew by and clocked her on the head, and she let go just as the last of the doorway came down.

With the gale forces gone, Dean and Sam hit the floor painfully. Something thumped within the circle. It was the goblet, beside a slim white hand. Dean looked at all that was left of Hilary Warwick and said, "Gross."

"Lucy!" Sam screamed. There was little left in the room, only the very heaviest pieces of furniture scattered about. He scrambled over to them and searched, finding a tiny form under the cover of a tipped sofa.

She was dead. He bent over her, sobbing and scooping her into her arms, and she crumpled into ashes in his hands.


	29. Chapter 29

**Chapter Twenty-Nine**

Dad arrived quickly, on tailwinds and temper. There was a lot of shouting in the conference room beside the principal's office, which Dean waited out. The principal had vacated the premises to let them deal with it. It was only when Dad turned on Sam to ask what the hell he had been thinking that Dean said, shortly and abruptly, "No!"

Dad hadn't seen how Sam ran crying to the goblet and smashed it to bits. He hadn't seen Sam gather every splinter and set them on fire. Dean wasn't going to let Dad take any of this out on Sam. That temper could blow itself out on Dean, who wasn't going to take it to heart like Sam would.

"That was his girlfriend, Dad," Dean said, and the rant stopped with a splutter and never picked up again. Then the two spoke about the facts of the case. Sam just stared at his hands, looking small and miserable in his chair.

The Warwick parents came, to meet with Dad and the principal, and Dean watched out the window as they went. The mother wouldn't even walk with the father. When he tried to put a hand on her shoulder, she wrenched away in revulsion and screamed at him that she wanted a divorce.

As Dad came back into the room, Sam said quietly to his hands, "Did you finish your case, Dad?"

It was the first time he had spoken. Dad looked at Sam, and Dean saw that his father looked a little broken. It was weird to make that observation: that Dad didn't know what to do with Sam and was just making it up as he went along. After a fumble, he said, "Yeah, Sam. We took him down. We won."

"You didn't," Sam said. "You took him down, but you didn't win."

Dad bridled a little at being contradicted, but restrained himself. "What do you mean?"

"You don't win, Dad," Sam said, his voice breaking. "Because those people are still gone."

Looking at him helplessly, Dad raised a hand like he wanted to pat Sam on the back. Then the principal knocked and Dad's neck nearly cracked as he turned to answer it. Dad couldn't deal with this, and Dean didn't know what to say either. He took the chair next to his little brother and watched a single tear roll down his cheek.

"She was so brave, Sammy," Dean said in a low voice as the principal spoke with Dad about what to do now.

"I don't ever want to be a hunter," Sam whispered. "Because winning still means losing."

Dean bit back that he wanted to be a hunter. What had been lost was in the past; what had been won was the future. There would be no Sixth Gen Kronoan club at this school, no more freaky accidents and deaths as ridiculous retributions. It was finished, this ugliness started a century ago. Students wouldn't have to be afraid that being something special was making them a target. But none of this seemed right to say to Sam at the moment.

"Since it was only a temporary placement, it might be better if we severed our relationship here and now-" the principal was saying.

"Of course I'm withdrawing them from this school!" Dad barked. "Come on, boys, let's pack up."

Classes were long underway by that point, so campus was deserted. The story to be spun to the student body and local news was of a tragic fire in the basement, which sadly resulted in four deaths. Only one of the deaths was truly tragic. While Dad talked to Bobby on the phone, Dean packed up his belongings. It took fifteen minutes. He wasn't going to bother returning his textbooks to the library. Those would just be left on the desk and someone else could take care of them. He didn't need his Penworth uniform either.

Dumping everything into the car, he went to see how Sam was doing with packing up. The door to his room was cracked open. Sam was just looking out the window, not having packed a thing. Dean turned around and went to the vending machines to buy two sodas. He came back and opened one, which he pressed into Sam's hand.

Sam looked at it for a long moment, and then said, "Thank you."

Dean drank from his own soda and set it down on the desk. Then he packed up Sam's things. Tonight they'd be far away, and Dean was eager to be in that place. Dad came in and didn't say anything about Dean packing up while Sam did nothing. Perhaps that was what was under a lot of the barking and yelling, Dad not having anything in his toolchest but those two things. Right now he couldn't do either of them, so he was rendered silent and uncomfortable.

Once they loaded Sam's things into the car, Dad said, "Maybe we could get some burgers on the way out of town. That sound good, boys?"

"Sure, Dad," Dean said. Sam just got into the back seat of the car and slammed shut the door. The bell rang and people flooded out of the buildings toward the cafeteria for lunch. "Do you have another case lined up?"

"Not at the moment," Dad said, his eyes on the back window. "I'm thinking we'll go back to Indiana, get you guys enrolled in school there."

Any school that wasn't this one! They got into the car and Dad started it up. The mass exodus of students was gone, except for Kappie. He drifted out of a classroom with his nose in a book and wandered in the general direction of the cafeteria. Then he stopped, whatever geeky thing he was reading so fascinating that he forgot to keep walking.

"Do you want to say goodbye?" Dean asked Sam, seeing that he was looking out the window to his friend. But Dad was already pulling away from the curb.

"_Shine_," Sam whispered to Kappie, and they left the school behind.

THE END

Author's Note: Thank you all for your comments and support with Idle Hands! I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to revisit Sam and Dean as adults in another story later this summer.


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